Thursday, April 26, 2001

A Survey Compares 2 Canadian MBA Programs, One Online and One Traditional By JANICE PASKEY When it comes to learning, the online classroom provides a better forum for communication than does its traditional counterpart, according to a new study by Canada's Athabasca University, a distance-education institution based in Alberta, and the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario. Nicole Haggerty, a doctoral candidate in business at Ivey, was the study's principal author, along with Scott Schneberger, an associate professor of management and information systems at Ivey, and Peter Carr, the associate director of Athabasca's Centre for Innovative Management. The researchers surveyed 111 students in an online M.B.A. program at Athabasca, as well as 101 M.B.A. students in a classroom-based case-study program at Ivey. Students in both programs had to work with classmates to produce 1,500-word reports. The survey looked at four categories of communication: cognitive, explanatory, social, and procedural. Athabasca's students, relying on online asynchronous communication, reported that they had experienced greater cognitive and explanatory learning -- the types of learning that help students understand and explain material more easily -- than Ivey students had. Ivey students scored the classroom environment higher in the social and procedural categories, defined as knowing details about fellow students and understanding procedures for completing assignments. "We frequently hear criticism of online learning, that the classroom is superior because of face-to-face communication," says Mr. Carr, who teaches e-business courses at Athabasca. "But we believe this is not so. In a typical week, our students exchange between 80 to 100 messages, which is far richer than the classroom." "We're not saying Athabasca is a better school than Ivey, but our survey shows that asynchronous communication is more powerful, and that in an online environment it is possible to do things that are more powerful than in the classroom," he says. Ivey's Mr. Schneberger, however, says the study needs to be considered in context. "The results are not a fair and accurate comparison between Ivey and Athabasca. Ivey believes that active, synchronous, student-to-student discussions face-to-face in class are the best learning device for business managers," he says, adding that Ivey has no plans to change the way its courses are taught. "The online world is nice for thinking about John Locke's principles, but we are training executives who can stand in front of the board meeting and make a point." Mr. Carr, of Athabasca, agrees that the results don't mean one M.B.A. program is better than the other. "I do want to stress that we don't feel all online interaction is good -- we think it will depend on many factors that will influence the success of the learning environment," he says. "However, in our research, comparing students in two high-quality M.B.A. programs, it can reasonably be concluded that online is very effective for subject understanding." Athabasca University is Canada's largest distance-education university and enrolls 25 percent of Canada's M.B.A. students. The Richard Ivey School was ranked 19th in the world by the Financial Times in January. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Ruling by U.S. Supreme Court is likely to limit anti-bias suits at public colleges College fund raising reached record $23.2-billion in 1999-2000 Few scientific journals disclose authors' potential conflicts of interest, study finds Racist, threatening letters stir tensions at Penn State U. U.S. research agencies need more money and better cooperation, House science chairman says 3 honor societies team up to promote a liberal-arts education to students Spring commencement speakers are announced by 18 colleges Pressured by music industry, a researcher is expected to scrub encryption speech A survey compares 2 Canadian M.B.A. programs, one online and one traditional