Improvisation in Educational Delivery by System Simulation and Management: Compressed, On-Demand On-Line (COOL) Courses

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The visualization for competitiveness is important for any design of Compressed, On-Demand On-Line (COOL) Courses. Two systems approaches were taken for design of such courses. First of simulation was made to see if such courses were feasible. Second a project management software was used to see the design and implementation objectives of the course. In the MBA level fundamentals of business administration course, which is affectionately called by the students as a boot camp course, six fundamental course was where designed in modular form and they are, accounting, business law, economics, finance, management, and statistics. All this six courses where designed in a modular form, to be delivered online in two separate modes e.g. the 16 week format and to eight-week formats. In both these designs simulation software was used to simulate the number of students that would enter the system at the beginning of the program and come out of the system at the end of eight weeks as standalone using a Moodle LMS platform, and 16 weeks using the Blackboard LMS platform. Such a design has been simulated using general purpose system simulation. After the simulation the implementation part has been designed by using the project management software. The methodology has been shown below.IMPLEMENTATION USING THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOFTWAREBackground and Methodology of DesignThe course was first offered face to face in 2003, and then the modified format was the hybrid format. Two of the six topics were covered in face-to-face classroom settings (Management and Business Law & Ethics). The face-to-face meetings were each, 1 day per topic. The students were required to have read all of the assigned material prior to coming to the class. During the 8-hour class, a professor would lecture and lead discussions on highlights from the assigned readings. An exam was given at the end of the day over the material. The other four topics (Economics, Accounting, Finance, and Statistics) were done in an online format using MBA Primer (Thomson Southwestern). Students would take quizzes and then an exam for each topic. MBA Primer is a self-paced format.There were several reasons for changing format. First, it was author’s opinion that the hybrid format was not conducive to tracking and monitoring student performance. Second, it did not provide enough opportunity for interaction between studen ts and the instructor. Third, the responsibility for learning rested solely with the student. Finally, it was difficult to asses s with any degree of certainty how much the student had learned. Therefore, the author redesigned the course as a completely online course using WebCT as the online platform.Two more questions that need answered: 1) Why online? and 2) How was the course constructed as an online course? The online environment was chosen to accommodate students from any location. OLLU has a campus in San Antonio and in Houston, Texas. Going to an online environment reduced the need for instructor travel for the face -to-face settings. Also, going to an online format reduced the need for two instructors. One instructor can facilitate the class resulting in additional cost savings for the university.Leveling courses are foundation courses. Meaning they are courses that all undergraduate business students would take. They typically cover the introductory concepts, theories, and terminology of the respective subjects that students will need for upper-level classes. Subject matter experts (SME) within OLLU’s School of Business were identified for each of the six topics. The SMEs were asked to identify the undergraduate textbook used for each subject. They further were asked to identify the required chapters that should be covered in each textbook that would provide students with a good foundation in the subject area. Armed with this information and having obtained the textbooks and the supplemental mater ials, the course was constructed by adapting a methodology the author learned from a presentation by Gordon Hodge from the University of New Mexico (UNM).