An Investigation into the People-Sequential Heuristic Method of Group Formation

This study investigates the people-sequential heuristic method of group formation as proposed by Beheshtian-Ardekani and Mahmood [2] and examined by Muller [9]. Responding to Muller's call for continued research on this topic, we first replicate the seven hypothesis investigations presented in that study and then consider several additional hypotheses designed to more fully examine the value of the process to the group members themselves. The results of this study indicate that the balanced groups assignment method is not effective as a sole means of increasing learning or satisfaction with the project. Of the twelve hypothesized relationships, which, if supported, would favor the use of balanced groups over randomly assigned groups, only one was supported. These findings and their relationship to group learning theory are discussed.     

An Analysis of the Pedagogical Effects of Expert System Use in the Classroom

An experiment that examines the use of expert systems to enhance student learning in an introductory Production and Operations Management (POM) class is discussed. An experimental expert system, SCHEDULER, was built within the domain of scheduling. It provided students with the opportunity to experience working with and integrating scheduling heuristics, constraints, and management requirements. The experiment also exposed students to using, rather than having to build, computerized decision aids, and expert systems in particular. Measurements of student learning and assessments of student perception regarding use of expert systems indicate expert systems can provide a valuable enhancement to the learning environment.     

From Natural Variation to Optimal Policy? The Importance of Endogenous Peer Group Formation

We take cohorts of entering freshmen at the United States Air Force Academy and assign half to peer groups designed to maximize the academic performance of the lowest ability students. Our assignment algorithm uses nonlinear peer effects estimates from the historical pre‐treatment data, in which students were randomly assigned to peer groups. We find a negative and significant treatment effect for the students we intended to help. We provide evidence that within our “optimally” designed peer groups, students avoided the peers with whom we intended them to interact and instead formed more homogeneous subgroups. These results illustrate how policies that manipulate peer groups for a desired social outcome can be confounded by changes in the endogenous patterns of social interactions within the group.     

COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN TEACHING ECONOMETRICS

In most econometrics courses the students are given limited exposure to the empirical applications of econometric theory. The use of canned programs would make it possible to cover more applied econometric work, and help prepare the students for more empirical work. The computer can be a valuable teaching aid for both instructor and student. The students will also gain valuable experience in the area of computer assisted data analysis. This paper discusses many of the programs appropriate for use in econometrics courses. Examples of problems using programs, and several alternative outlines of possible courses in applied econometrics are presented.     

An Analysis of Pedagogical Effects of Alternative Teaching Approaches of Goal Programming

Lee, Shim, and Lee [12] suggested the superiority of the signal flow graph (SFG) method over the modified simplex method in enhancing students' learning of goal programming (GP). The present study empirically investigated this claim by analyzing the effect of the SFG method of GP on students' learning. In the process, this study also developed an effective tool for measuring GP knowledge. The findings showed that students who learned the SFG method understood GP better and more easily than those who learned the concept through the modified simplex method. The students who learned the SFG method of GP were also less dependent on rules or formulas than the students who learned the modified simplex method.     

Distance Learning: Education or Economics?

Sir John Daniel, Vice Chancellor of the Open University in England, pronounced that American universities are in a crisis of access, flexibility and cost. His solution is that American Universities and Colleges should employ educational technologies that allow students to earn college degrees without visiting the college campus (distance learning). The argument is that distance learning is a cost-effective way of providing more students with access to higher education. Sir John's argument illustrates a crisis in neither access, flexibility, nor cost. On further inspection, distance learning degree programs appear to be a strategy for reducing the cost of higher education by replacing professors with computers and part-time teachers. This strategy offers limited educational benefits for the student and may present a financial danger to smaller colleges and universities, if they succumb to the pressure to develop distance, learning degree programs. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Education DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A TOOL FOR ASSIGNING STUDENTS TO GROUPS FOR CLASS PROJECTS*

Group project work is an integral part of many university courses. Assigning students to project groups can be difficult because of the students' diverse backgrounds. Many instructors therefore decide not to assign group projects. This paper develops and validates an instrument that assigns both experienced and inexperienced students to different project groups, thereby creating a balanced, fair environment. The instrument is checked for reliability and validity and then is used to assign students to different project groups. Based on group performance, the end-of-the-semester results also are provided. Path analysis is used to test a causal model. Conclusions and implications for future research are presented.     

Building Strategic Technology Alliances for Teaching and Learning

There is a major need for higher education to confront intense competition, enhance academic programs to meet the challenges of this competition, and to develop new teaching and learning strategies to meet the demands of the global marketplace. Technology and the Internet are intended to break down the barriers of time and space and enable more students to participate and collaborate with faculty and other students. Critical thresholds must be met in order to use technology to communicate, collaborate, and transform teaching and learning. Strategic technology alliances establish a partnership between technology vendors and higher education that will achieve these thresholds to meet the teaching and learning needs of the 21st century student. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

DO LAB EXPERIMENTS MISREPRESENT SOCIAL PREFERENCES? THE CASE OF SELF‐SELECTED STUDENT SAMPLES

Social preference research has received considerable attention among economists in recent years. However, the empirical foundation of social preferences is largely based on laboratory experiments with self‐selected students as participants. This is potentially problematic as students participating in experiments may behave systematically different than nonparticipating students or nonstudents. In this paper we empirically investigate whether laboratory experiments with student samples misrepresent the importance of social preferences. Our first study shows that students who exhibit stronger prosocial inclinations in an unrelated field donation are not more likely to participate in experiments. This suggests that self‐selection of more prosocial students into experiments is not a major issue. Our second study compares the behavior of students and participants recruited from the general population in a trust experiment. In general, we find very similar behavioral patterns for the two groups, but nonstudents make significantly more generous repayments suggesting that results from student samples might be seen as a lower bound for the importance of prosocial behavior.     

Integrating Analysis and Communication Skills into the Decision Science Curriculum*

The teaching of decision sciences presupposes that careful attention is directed toward improving students' critical thinking and analytical skills. This paper presents an approach to teaching quantitative methods classes that focuses on developing student skills in the areas of analytical and critical thinking through written and oral communication. The approach requires very little additional instructor preparation time and does not require the instructor to make major changes in either the content or organization of the course. While the instructor's investment is minimal, the benefits to the students appear to be substantial.     

Media Appropriateness: Effects of Experience on Communication Media Choice

Organizations are faced with a myriad of emerging advanced information technologies. Management may be anxious about the numerous choices while simultaneously yearning for instant realization of benefits promised by the adopted technologies. Management should also be aware that the eventual institutional use of these technologies is dependent upon the learning and training opportunities presented to individuals. Individual approval or established perceptions toward technology appropriateness are mostly idiosyncratic and contingent upon numerous factors such as task goals or prior technology experience. This paper examines the effect of learning experiences with nine communication media, based on perception changes of media appropriateness. Two hundred and ninety-five MBA students participated in a longitudinal quasi-experimental study. Results indicate that traditionally rich media such as face-to-face, group meetings, and telephone were consistently perceived to be more appropriate than emerging new media over time. However, an individual's specific experience with communication media affects perceptions of media appropriateness, and this is particularly evident in computer-based communications. In addition, changes in perception of media appropriateness were directly related to the participants' learning experience and were particularly salient with new media. Furthermore, increased use of some media was found to be associated with decreased use of other media. This study demonstrates that deliberate technology-use mediation can be an effective management mechanism to facilitate an individual's ability to gain experience in the use of new technologies. This paper also suggests that an individual's media experiences and temporal factors are two important but underemphasized factors in understanding and studying technology choice and use.     

Educating collaborative planners: strengthening evidence for the learning potential of multi-stakeholder regional learning environments

Abstract

Planning education needs effective learning environments that support students’ boundary crossing competence development. The multi-stakeholder regional learning environment (RLE) is, by its typical design, hypothesized to foster boundary crossing. This quasi-experimental mixed method pre- and post-test study affirms the effectiveness of the RLE for stimulating competence development, and specifically shows the added value of three typical ‘boundary crossing’ RLE design characteristics, i.e. working in multidisciplinary student groups, working intensively with multiple stakeholders, and a high coaching intensity. Results strengthen previous findings, and contribute to the debate in planning education on an evidence-based pedagogical fundament for commonly used authentic learning environments.     

A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE UTILIZATION EFFECTIVENESS OF A PERT PROGRAM

This article is based on the belief that students should learn the computational aspects of decision science techniques outside the classroom, thus freeing the instructor from this task and enabling him to devote more class time to focusing on the theoretical and/or application-oriented elements which will take students further in their learning experience. An experiment was designed to determine the learning value of one way of achieving this, namely the use of a Learning Center where students learned individually using a programmed instruction learning machine. The research involved both graduates and undergraduates learning the fundamentals of PERT—some with the learning machine approach while others were involved in more conventional pedagogies. Surprising success was discovered relative to both the approach and the quality of the PERT program used, with far-reaching implications regarding futuristic approaches to decision science education.     

Community-Based Service-Learning: Does It Have a Role in Management Education?

Community based service-learning is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs, together with structured opportunities designed to promote student learning and development. Can it be effectively applied to address the current struggles of management education? Management education is facing a gap between traditional curricular content and society's needs for new competencies. The Academy is also faced with the challenge of more effectively relating to society's social, economic and civic problems. The results of this analysis indicate that service-learning offers a means of closing the gap by helping to prepare students who are lifelong learners and active, caring participants in their communities. Service-learning appears to be a promising means of developing such managerial skills as leadership, critical thinking, teamwork, and cooperation. The limitations of service-learning for management education are addressed as well.     

Affective and Cognitive Factors Influencing Sensitivity to Probabilistic Information

In study 1 different groups of female students were randomly assigned to one of four probabilistic information formats. Five different levels of probability of a genetic disease in an unborn child were presented to participants (within‐subject factor). After the presentation of the probability level, participants were requested to indicate the acceptable level of pain they would tolerate to avoid the disease (in their unborn child), their subjective evaluation of the disease risk, and their subjective evaluation of being worried by this risk. The results of study 1 confirmed the hypothesis that an experience‐based probability format decreases the subjective sense of worry about the disease, thus, presumably, weakening the tendency to overrate the probability of rare events. Study 2 showed that for the emotionally laden stimuli, the experience‐based probability format resulted in higher sensitivity to probability variations than other formats of probabilistic information. These advantages of the experience‐based probability format are interpreted in terms of two systems of information processing: the rational deliberative versus the affective experiential and the principle of stimulus‐response compatibility.     

MOTIVATING STUDENTS IN THE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT CLASS: CHALLENGES FOR THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

Motivating students to learn and apply operations management concepts is an important aspect of the learning process in an operations management class. While an emphasis on techniques and pedagogical technology has some motivational benefits, this paper proposes an emphasis on student/teacher interaction and a deeper understanding of complex situations. To support this approach, publishers should provide the materials to effectively use the new classroom technologies and the tools to support a wide variety of teaching styles. In addition, publishers should provide creative cross-functional simulations so that students can understand the role of operations management in the context of the firm. Finally, rich decision-making environments are needed to put the students in more realistic situations.     

Earning While Learning: When and How Student Employment is Beneficial

Although studies of student employment (‘earning while learning’) mostly find positive wage effects, they do not adequately consider the relation of the employment to the field of study. We investigate how different types of student employment during tertiary education affect short‐ and long‐term labour market returns. Beyond examining differences between non‐working and part‐time working students, we distinguish between student employment related and unrelated to the field of study. Our results show significant positive labour market returns of ‘earning while learning’ only for student employment related to the field of study. These returns consist of a lower unemployment risk, shorter job‐search duration, higher wage effects, and greater job responsibility.     

College student bereavement experience in a Christian university

As part of the National College Grief Study, college student bereavement experience was examined specifically in a Christian university climate. Sex, year in school, and closeness to the deceased were measured in terms of academic and mental health outcomes and resources utilized. Females reported more mental health problems when close to the deceased, and seniors were less likely than first year students to utilize personal support resources of family and religion. During close losses, students experienced more mental health problems and negative social outcomes, but they did not access more resources. Recommendations for university personnel and suggestions for further research are given.