The experienced-based master’sprogrammewas a joint initiative,as the organisation of the programme is a collaboration between the Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Educa-tionandtheSchool ofBusiness and Economics(HHT), thathavetheir faculties and students locatedatall the four campuses attheUniversity. Due to the profile of the master’s, as an experience-basedMBA,it had a diversestudent intake, but all students had workplace expe-rience. The divisionof the duties and responsibilities variedover time between the faculties.
In the firstperiod, the BFE faculty had most of the administrative duties,and in the next pe-riod the HSL faculty had taken over the mainresponsibilitiesforadministration. From the beginning, both faculties hadcollaboratedindiverseways. These students normally study for 2 ½-years, and the fact that it is ‘experience based’ also means that it does not qualify for applying for a PhD programme. This experience-based Master’sof BusinessAdministration consists of fivemodules/topics (60 ECTS intotal) and a master’s thesis (30 ECTS) that com-bine practical business expertise with soft skills to give students thewell-roundededucation that many employers arelooking for. The online coursewithin the MBA that we followed more closely had 89 students enrolled, and was named ‘Economic management and financial analysis’. It included 10 ECTS of the 90 ECTS in the whole master’s. The programme also con-sisted of thefollowingcourses: marketing management, economic management and financial analysis, organisation and leadership theory, scientific method,strategy and management challengesin businesses, and different subjects related to their master’s thesis. The MBA has five fullprofessors involved, but the actual coursewas led by two teachers, associate profes-sors with background from thebusinesssector. Theselected course took place in the first year, during the students’firstsemester of their MBA programme. The second coursewithin the master’s programme wasselected and more closely followed, the reason being to avoid initial issues addressed in the firstcourse, suchasregistering, establishingandgetting used
to becoming a student again after many years of work and such. We also wanted to select students whohadstartedtheir studyingproperly, and had some experience with collabora-tionandattending online and offlineactivities. The durationofthe coursewas eight weeks, and the empiricaldatawerecollected inautumn 2016 and early winter 2017. The course is organised in twooveralldomains: 1)financial accounting andanalysis, and2)economicsand business management. Each domain includes five subtopics, so the course is organised in10
‘steps’ or modules. Wefollowedstep 1and 6 in detail,ashighlighted in the followingoverview of the course, inFigure8.
7.4.1 Data collection
All datawere collected during the first semester of the students 2½-yearMBAprogramme.
Even though this indicates that theseare ‘experienced’ students, some havenotbeen studying for many years. All students and teacherswere given information about the study, and an opportunity to decline participation.Everyone agreed to participate in the study and both personnel and students gave their consent to beobserved and interviewed. Therest of the students in the coursewere passive participants and were informed about our study. The student populationin our particularcaseincluded 89 students. The datacollectionfollowed the overalldesign and approach outlined inchapter 1 of this report, and included interviews with the teacher before and after the main activities in the course, observations of course ac-tivities, and bothindividual and group interviews withstudents. Four student groups were observed intheir online learning environments and four groups were later interviewed(only two of the groups were ‘stable’ groups, meaning that they always workedtogether). The fol-lowing data were collected, as illustrated in Table 14.
Figure 8 - Overview of the MBA course
Table 14 – Overview of case and collected data (MBA course)
Assignments on different content: four in all, but one mandatory with the intention to de-velop the student’s academic and practical understanding by investigating challenges
Types of data General course material: course plan, syllabus, lecture slides, task descriptions, resources provided via the Learning Management System Fronter, diverse online material, specified for each of the ten steps within the course, teacher’s evaluation of the course
Observation protocols: a total 10 online lectures, where four online lectures and four real-time conferences were followed and observed more closely by filling in a protocol. Chat logs from ten online sessions were observed
Video recordings: 10 hours online lectures and 6 sessions of real-time online conference with the teacher were video recorded; 1 video recorded interview with 1 teacher, 4 video recorded interviews with students.
Audio recordings: 2 start-up audio recorded interview with the 2 teachers involved, one end interview with one of the teachers. 4 audio recorded interview. All recorded material was transcribed
Documents/products: teachers’/adm. evaluation report, assignment texts, exams, syllabus, notes and reminders posted at the LMS/Fronter, logs from discussion forum linked to Fronter
Interview data: pre-interviews with the two teachers involved, one post interview with the main teacher; group interviews with four groups; brief individual ad hoc interviews with eight of the other students
Field notes/online data: field notes from every site visit; all course related interactions and online resources organised within the Learning Management System and Facebook busi-ness management, where students are presented with diverse decision-making and m anage-ment models,including centralaspectsconcerning budgets and management. A compressed presentation of the mainlearning outcomes of the course is that the students are supposedto acquire knowledge of subjects such as finance and accounting (for instance ‘the financial statement’, its purpose, use and accounting principles involved). This includes different eco-nomic models and their limitations, decision-making, economic planning concerning budgets and the management of strategic processes in‘goalmanagement’, to mention a few central topics. The students are expected to manage the mainprinciples involved, make their own corrections and provide relevant financial information usingdifferent models,andcritically analyse information.
The course included the following main teacher-ledactivities; one voluntaryon-campus gath-ering, online lectures and online seminars (weekly onlinesynchronous seminars focusing on relevant queries and solving earlier exams). Figure 9 illustratesthese main teacher-led a ctiv-ities, but asthis was an online course with relatively little synchronous contactbetween the teacher and the students, muchoftheteacher-led‘facilitation’ ofthe coursewasalso distrib-utedto the students without meetingthe teacher inrealtime.Before the coursestarted, the students also received a video lecture on the LMS thatgave them some essential knowledge about studying as an adult learner. This was meant tohelp themsort out ways ofapproaching their learningprocess in a fruitful manner. Otherteacher-organised activitiesfacilitating the students’ learning included an extended number of online resources provided at the LMS, specially designed for the students work/group work topractise different tasks and chal-lenges related to each theme (bothvoluntary), and preparations for the final exam and the opportunity to get feedback from their teacher on several formative assessment tasks during the course. As the courseprovided severalopportunities toreceive feedback and formative assessment, and students were also encouraged to work together, butthere were noformal requirements to assess or collaboratewithpeers. The students also had the opportunity to receive feedback from the teacher to improve their work.
Intheinterviews with theteachers, it was clear that the main planned activitieswere fol-lowedwith some fewexceptions. The teachers aimed to create a clear alignment between the learning goals, the learningactivities and the providedassessments, in line with the concept of ConstructiveAlignment(Biggs & Tang, 2011).Both theinterviews and the observations demonstrated that they did thisbycouplingthelearning goals directly to the work-related challenges the students faced. The teachersmentioned some generalchallenges, related to the fact that they had movedinto anotherbuilding, where their technical requestswere not satisfactorily met and which provided some challenges inrelation to the teachers’ teaching and learning activities. Some of the earlier teaching and learning sessions facilitated within the platform Adobe Connect, which allowedtheteacher to challengestudents in diverseways,
Figure 9 – Main planned activities (MBA course)
discuss in diverse formats and follow students more closely, werenowheld in more tradi-tional lecturehalls,where there were clearchallenges related to technical aspects that had implications for the collaborationwith the students in the sessions. The interviews with the teachers demonstratedthat students did notget the same opportunity toget multiple feed-back from the teacher and students, nor to ask questions during the session in an effective way. These new experiences made the teachers reflect on changes they wanted to make inthe course for next time. In the next sections, we dig deeperinto the main activitiesin the selected course.
7.5.1 Real time introductory gathering at the university campus
The real time introductorygathering atthe university campus focused on introducing the two mentioned subtopics of the course; 1) financial accounting and analysis, and 2) economics and business management.This first voluntary campus-based gathering highlighted the dif-ferent elements that the students weresupposed to work with in the course. The teachers also introduced the students to howthey were supposed to work during the course, and what strategiesthey preferably coulduse to get thebestout of studying on thiscourse. The students were also introduced to ways of thinking inrelation to the different steps and how the sylla-bus, the onlineseminarsand the (voluntary) group work were meant to support their learn-ing process invarious ways. The teachers also took time to letthe students know what they had learnedfrom previous experiencewith thesame course, andwhat they expected from the students. They told the students about the positive and challenging aspect of the flexibility and took timeto make sure everyone wascomfortable with the way the course washeld, as regards both content and technical aspects. In the interviews with the students it wasalso clear that thestudents who workedtogether ‘found’each other at this firstgathering, even though there was no organised ‘group matching’ of the students facilitated by the teachers.
The studentswho‘matched/ found each other’ in this firstmeeting also maintained contact and supported each other during the study.
7.5.2 Online lectures
Intotal, the courseincluded 14 studio-recorded video lectures organised in ninesteps (com-bined with other learning resources, like notes, reading lists,repetitivetasks, finished solu-tions fromthe previous steps, and many online resources meant to support their understand-ing). The online lectures were studio-recorded. The content washigh-quality studio-pro-duced and presented in a prepared manner, specially meant for students working in a
‘flipped-learning mode’,using the onlinelectures to prepare for the weekly in class/online seminars. The content waspresented in a teacher-centredway, asthere were no synchronous options for collaboration with students. When it comes to technical and didactical issues, the design enabled students to engage in the video and otherrecordedcontent, like recorded real-time sessions or the provided online resources. The lectures had diversepedagogical pur-poses; students were expected to watch the videosahead of class, and some were madefor
students to approach the content whenever they want, to extend the flexibility. One of the teachers described his teaching like this:
My teaching is based on the syllabus, and I go through it in the pre-recorded studio recorded videos. The students use them in a ‘flipped learning’ manner, as a starting point in their learn-ing process, where they can use both the book and the videos to acquire the central part of the syllabus.
The online lectures involved no direct interaction withstudents, but the teacher posed rhe-toricalquestions, and pointed to additional learning resources (link collection) made availa-ble for them in the LMS during the lecture, meant to stimulate and activate the students ‘self-directed learning’. This could typically be the voluntary assignments, tasks or learning re-sources, structured and aligned with the steps within the course design. Students were given the opportunity to contact the teacher about feedback on theassignments (LMS, email or phone). The students used the online lectures for learning. Theyappreciated the flexibility that comes with having the opportunity to watch the video recordings at their own pace. The interviewsrevealed that the students watched the online lecturesafterwork or during the weekends. These lectures served the function ofintroducing and explaining concepts, model-ling how to solveproblems, and motivating and introducingstudents to important knowledge sources. One mainfunction was also to givestudents a knowledge-based overview of the con-tent. The online lectures also served as an important source for the students when they want to repeatthecontent,especially whenthey are doing their exams or findsome part of the content extra challenging.
7.5.3 Online seminars
Online synchronous weekly seminarswere based on the students’ workwithearlier-given assessment tasks that were discussed and solved. The students were supposed to workon their ownortogether in a group during the week to prepare each seminar. Students could participate either on campus or online. All these seminars were recorded and could be watched by the students after they met each other in the seminar. Several ofthestudents also reported that it was a challenge that their weekly online synchronous seminarswere held in their most hectic working hours during the day. One student expressed it like this:
The online seminars are held during working hours, and as this is a course that is counting on students studying after work, this is a time of the day where it’s impossible to get in touch with anyone at the university. I wish that at least every second online seminar was held in the evening or there could be organised a ‘help and support- hour’ in the evening from time to time ... or something like that.
From the teachers’ point of view, the main function ofonline weekly seminarswas to be avail-able for questions aswell as to give the students an arena to meetotherstudents. It wasalso a way of giving students a chance to get the teachers’ or fellow students’ view on earlier exams and to discuss solutions. This gave the students an opportunity to get triple feedback (peer, teacher and self-assessment), which could provide valuable aspects into the students learning
process. For the students whowere not present, they could use the recorded online seminars in a ‘flipped pedagogical manner’. This also gavethem the opportunity to see different aspects of the recordingsseveral times or to approach their understandings togetherwithother fel-low students.
The students are expected to actively use and get support inthevideo lectures whenthey prepare for the online seminars. The day before the seminar the teacher reveals the correct solution on the learning management platform. The students get nearly 24 hours to go through the correct answer and their own solution to prepare for the online seminar the next day. Studentsunavailable for participation in the real time (synchronous) activities inthe seminar get the chance to see their pair’s discussions/work with the session on their own, as the seminar is recorded. Even if the interviews and observations demonstrated that is was
‘normally’only 5–15 students participating in the real-time seminars and lectures– often be-tween five and ten – students report that these were engaging and valuable learning re-sources invarious ways. Many of the students appreciatedwatching the online seminarsin the evening.
7.5.4 Group work and assignments
The forms of assessment within the coursewere organised asfour online voluntary assign-ments leading up tothefinal mandatory assignments (related to the main contents of this particularpart of the course). There were also additionaltasks related to each part of the nine
The forms of assessment within the coursewere organised asfour online voluntary assign-ments leading up tothefinal mandatory assignments (related to the main contents of this particularpart of the course). There were also additionaltasks related to each part of the nine