learning - Academic Conferences Limited

Glenn Duckworth
merely skim read the texts. The notion of forcing them to prepare was seen as being an extremely
positive factor for these groups of students.
They also stated that the activities helped to ease them into the academic subject areas and helped to
build confidence and reduce stress. This was particularly apparent with the Management in a
Complex World and Managing Decisions modules. Management in a Complex World was the first
module that the cohort enrolled upon in their MBA studies, and a large percentage of them had been
away from higher education for many years. They indicated that the pre-workshop activities helped
them to re-acclimatise to the world of academia and helped to build confidence. Managing Decisions,
a module dealing with finance and accounting has always been treated with trepidation by students
who are not confident with numbers and accounting. The students reported that the resources and
exercises helped to build confidence and reduce their worries about embarking on the module.
For one of the early modules there were some technical/administrative issues relating to enrolment
which led to some students not being able to access Blackboard in advance of the classroom based
sessions. This was overcome by e-mailing the tasks to these students. Subsequently, the majority of
them did engage in the activities. The technical/administrative issues have now been resolved and all
students have access to modules a month in advance.
A sample of student comments:
“Really forces you to do the pre-reading for the module.”
“It forces you to prepare. Therefore the module achieves more.”
“Overall it was good as it forced me to read.”
“Enabled me to get into the zone, focusing on key learning.”
“Very useful - especially for getting you to do pre-reading. Needs to be in Blackboard
plenty of time before module date.”
“Very handy as it gives/offers pre-module insight.”
“I completed the tasks sent by e-mail and they were very helpful.”
The lecturers also found the pre-workshop activities to be very beneficial:
“I found them incredibly useful… we’ve had three cohorts going through using this
system and each time it seems to work extremely well. The students thoroughly enjoy
being exposed to the subject before they get here. In a glossary sense they learn the
terminology which normally takes me weeks to get across to them. And it’s whetted their
appetite to follow through some of these things rather more because there’s a
combination of learning the language of Economics and also being able to start thinking
about the theories and the concepts that we explore early on. And they’re doing that
even before they arrive on the campus. I’m finding in the early seminars and discussion
groups a much greater depth of knowledge than I’ve previously seen in students like that.
So I have found it incredibly useful.” – Module leader for Management in a Complex
World.
The lecturers believed that the activities enabled students to prepare for the classroom based
sessions and therefore more could be achieved in class:
“…I was able to teach from a point of view where I knew they had already been
introduced to basic terms. Very often with this sort of subject you have some students
that actually say ‘I know nothing’ about this and almost sit there with a dazed expression
for quite some time until they … get eased into it. Whereas I think with this they had
already been eased into it.” – Module leader for Managing Decisions.
“They usually tell you something towards the end of the module, not at the beginning. At
the beginning I think they find it an additional burden… at the end they keep coming up
and saying it was so useful being able to understand what you’re talking about without
you having to keep explaining the terminology, the theories or the concepts. So it’s a
really good foundation for me to build on more quickly than I normally would with a
module.” - Module leader for Management in a Complex World.
“I was quite taken aback by the fact that they knew more about the topics I was
discussing with them than previous cohorts… They already had some information at a
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