Scott Mehall and Jeremy Jeffery from Bloomsburg University presented at the Lilly Conference online 2021 about “Teaching Research to Future Business Educators Online.” The program they teach in is business education: M.Ed in Business Education. There are three tracks in the program, and the BUSED 521 course on Business Research has the goals of applying educational research to the business classroom, assisting students in becoming better at conducting research, and consumers of research. Traditionally, the course was taught as a three-hour in-person class. This past year they taught the course asynchronously online. They talked about the challenges of creating high-quality content to replace some of the synchronous interactions. This is indeed a challenge we have had! They also offered optional synchronous Zoom sessions. The class has a research proposal report. Participants start defining the research questions in the first week of the course and have several checkpoints over the course of the semester. Students can present their proposal in. a short video either asynchronously (recorded) or live on Zoom. The next assignment the presenters discussed was business research case studies they designed to apply research to a realistic use case. The case studies seem to require analyses and critical thought. The video overviews of the case studies were great because they showed how the cases were presented as sites (maybe Google sites) with interaction. The “Find. Critique. Discuss” assignments involve students finding a research study in a field that is of interest to them. They then complete a worksheet and share their findings with their peers. Students have to analyze the methods used, the theories involved, and whether the findings are supported by the data. The presenters were honest about the up-front work required for asynchronous courses. They also spoke about the difficulty of teaching research and the importance of allowing students the option to research a topic of interest. The feedback from students they shared was mixed, with some students appreciate the asynchronous flexibility yet missing the interactions and others loving the course structure. I learned about the use of case studies in a business research course taught asynchronously and a neat “Find. Critique. Discuss” assignment format that could be adapted to the courses I teach.
In another session entitled “Faculty Presence in Times of Crisis in Online Education,” Laura Ellis-Lai from Texas State University spoke about a technical writing class taught many years by Ellis-Lai face-to-face. The class attracts a mix of upper-division students from several majors. Their campus transitioned last summer to the Canvas LMS. Ellis-Lai aimed to have ten modules with a consistent organization: read a chapter, post a video reflection, complete a written assignment, and take a quiz. The consistency between each module in the course helped students navigate the course. Ellis-Lai described the challenges that students in 2020 dealt with. Availability and presence in a crisis become critical, explained Ellis-Lai citing a couple of studies. Ellis-Lai reached out early and often, sharing videos, and responded to each student’s self-introduction in Canvas! I want to do this! Laura’s posts were detailed, personalized, and… long! During the intense summer session, Ellis-Lai shared information that humanized her. Ellis-Lai responded to posts using FlipGrid at night because during the day her daughter shared the living room space. Some students responded at night too! This makes sense! Ellis-Lai provided quick feedback and allowed revisions for those not yet mastering key skills. Ellis-Lai also talked about using the “Message Students Who” tool in Canvas to contact students who had not submitted work: “Hey There – I noticed you didn’t complete your Chapter 2 Quiz. Is everything okay? Please let me know if I can help.” Students appreciated this, and I like learning about and comparing wording for these emails. A quick check-in from faculty means a lot to students was one of the takeaways shared. Ellis-Lai shared that students liked the consistent elements each day/week in online classes, “night-owl” students appreciated hearing from instructors at night, seemingly inactive students still monitor email, and there are always some in crisis! These takeaways are helpful in thinking about who our audience is and why structure and consistency are so important.
