Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58065
What's your management style? Casual, buttondown or executive three piece suit, The UTD School of Management offers a variety of educational opportunities to fit your style. Full time, part-time, online or on-campus. Degree, non-degree, or professional development. Our bachelor, masters and Ph.D. programs offer concentrations ranging from Medical Management to Accounting, from Finance to Information Technology. With state-of-the-art facilities, internationally recognized faculty and an innovative learning environment, we will help you develop your individual management style. For more information on all our programs visit http://som.utdallas.edu THE UNIVERS ITY OF TEXAS AT DAL LAS S C H O O L O F M A N A G E M E N T Fully accredited by AACSB International – The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business UTD is an affirmative action/equal opportunity university dents are using e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, podcasts, or collaborative learning networks, business schools can engage students directly to develop their competencies using the technologies that help shape the modern workplace. In my master's classes this year, for example, I have asked my students to create podcasts for their final presentations. Their projects are judged on how an audience—one that isn't confined to the classroom and forced to listen—reacts to their podcasts. I want students to realize that using dif- ferent communication channels requires mastering different kinds of communication skills. This project, of course, has made the students somewhat anxious, because they have been trained over the years to become PowerPoint zombies. Even so, such projects are valuable because they can help dispel this anxiety. They help students develop a variety of work-based skills and encourage them to think about how they deliver value. In business, value often isn't delivered in the classroom, or even in the conference room. Often, it's delivered through online channels to clients who have little time for face-to-face meetings. Learning technologies are just one piece of the manage- ment education puzzle. We must evaluate how technology helps to enhance or extend a business school's larger value proposition. Businesses today want to hire students who possess the behaviors and visions that correspond to the way they'll work in the future. Business schools can use technol- ogy to design work environments, online and off, that will help students develop those competencies. A Great Experiment Although these experts offer a variety of perspectives, most agree that as time goes on, students' appetite for online educational experiences will intensify. They'll choose online formats not only to suit their schedules, but also to learn the online communication and collaborative skills they'll need to conduct business effectively. Not only that, but some observ- ers predict that in the next decade, online education may become a truly a la carte proposition—students might attend one school in person and another online, or choose indi- vidual courses from a variety of institutions. As their options increase, students will be better able to build their own per- sonal learning environments. Online students such as Mishra and Linartaite note that online instruction can be ineffective if instructors do not make the parameters and expectations of their courses clear. Frequent instructor interaction and detailed weekly outlines of instructor expectations are crucial to designing valuable online learning experiences. As e-learners become more sophisticated, most will gravitate to courses that present information dynamically, use diverse media effectively, facilitate discussion actively, and incorporate high levels of personal interaction and group collaboration. That may be a welcome message for faculty who remain reluctant to investigate what current technologies have to offer. Except for the computer screen and keyboard, these objectives aren't so different from what educators have done in traditional classrooms all along. ■ z BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 29