Management education delivery-Challenges & Opportunities

One of the many ads telecasted on various channels, that attracts the most is of BSNL where a son working in some foreign country is able to talk, to see and get seen by his family members in India.

Why I like this ad! It is because it gives a glimpse of the power of IT, it refers the fact that how this knowledge of IT has revolutionized our lives, our day-to-day activities, how it has increased the efficiency and effectiveness by supporting decision making process. With the further technological progress it is likely that IT will become more pervasive and will continue to make impact in our lifestyles in significant ways.

A lot has been said and done in terms investment in this technology by businesses but irony is that that this IT revolution has not been able to impress really the core processes of learning and teaching in business schools. Researches have shown that academic institutions lag behind corporates by almost a decade in the adoption of new technology.

But, do not loose all the hopes as few initiatives have been taken in this respect like at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy where PC’s have been installed with proper networking in classroom. However, the utilization of these PC’s to access common details about the real world is very limited. Secondly, University of Maryland has built up electronic classroom that enables group of students to communicate with each electronically and anonymously.

Educational institutions primarily deal with the creation, packaging and delivery of information and knowledge and to my belief IT can profoundly alter the ways in which tasks are done.

This following pages deal issues concerning IT in management colleges and standards of management programs offered by universities.

1)Issues concerning scope of IT in management colleges-

As, I have mentioned earlier that institute basically deal in CPD (creation, packaging, and delivery) of knowledge. So, it becomes all important for management institutions to comprehend the changes that an IT intensive system will demand in CPD.

(i) INCREASED EMPHASIS OF SELF LEARNING AND DISTANCE LEARNING:- I was having a discussion with the respected Vice-chancellor of Uttrakhand Open University (UOU),Dr.Hasan, where he was sharing his thoughts on the distance learning mode and he was working on the pattern of IGNOU to make this learning in a small state like Uttrakhand more interactive through satellite.

If this experience is any indication then one trend is clear that is distance learning is going to become more interactive and secondly there will be greater reliance on exploration and self-learning.

These trends have been promoted by the advent of multimedia and internet.

This implies that in due course of time the classroom teaching may become second choice or lesser significant. The enrollment in DLP has increased and at least seven Open Universities have been created. I have already discussed about UOU, Take case of INGOU, which uses two-way audio and one-way video to conduct classes in 50 centers simultaneously. It is a fact that more students are enrolling in Open Universities even in developed countries because of faster communication through electronic means moreover as the cost of two-way conferencing comes down, the necessity for classroom contact may totally disappear.

Moreover, upto now distance education and traditional educations are treated as two different entities. But this approach has to be changed. This will help in sharing the limited faculty resource with a large number of students located in different geographical locations.

Further, courses need to be redesigned as student is placing greater reliance on self learning rather than being taught by a ‘teacher’. The teacher has to assume the role of a facilitator and at the same time delivery process has to be changed from verbal-lecture based to computer-based lessons using multimedia.

(ii) IT Knowledge For Would-Be-Managers Of Tomorrow:-

Usually entrants to management education are having certain amount of computing knowledge thanks to their schooling. Building on this base, managers need to develop a level of comfort in dealing with spreadsheets, emails, word processing etc. By doing so, management institutions will be enhancing the working life of an executive in any function. Hence, the classes must be assisted by lot of lab sessions to give enough exposure and practice with regard to the productivity tools and platform to make themselves aware about different types of computing environment that they are going to face.

(iii) Internet Facility:-

1. The effectiveness of library searches can be greatly enhanced by providing access to electronic forms of journal in library.

Intranet, LAN can connect students in classroom to instructor in Lab, can promote communication between teacher / students etc.

(iv) EXPERIENCE OF OTHERS:-

Another point, that I would like to use to highlight the role of IT discussed in this paragraph: An adage goes conveying the essence that an intelligent is a person who learns not only by his own experience but also by the experience of others. One does not need to put hand in the fire to have first experience of what happens when it is does so but, believe me that most academicians do not have a chance to share the experience of other academicians to interact with other researchers, to share their own experience with others. One of the reason for this fact is that faculty does not have enough opportunities to attend conferences/seminars. (To some extent faculty working in University Departments, have this advantage but faculty associated with private institutions are not that privileged)

Here, role of IT comes into play with emails one can communicate with their counterpart in any part of the world. The researcher can create blogs where he can receive the solution from various source to this problem. Computer conferencing offers to researcher to work with colleagues working in other places.

(v) IT AS A PEDAGOGICAL TOOL:-

The aspect of this technological which a management institute must consider and in which as a teacher/facilitator. I am most interested in the effectiveness of IT as pedagogical tool. My own experience says that IT enhances the effectiveness of overall study, management exams, management games, and even of ancient time’s lectures. The case discussions in the live from can be shown to the students which will be enlivened activity. Tools of analysis like SPSS can also e provided to help the student to analyze the data to construct more realistic scenarios for their analysis. Moreover, a common problem that one comes across during case analysis is the inability to convey qualitative data through textual perception for example listening to Chief Executive’s speech on his company’s objectives be a better option than reading the text.

1. These presentation slides need not be confined to textual material, they can include photographs, audio/video clips, even the animation into slides can be introduced, in a different node, these slides are if carefully prepared and presented then, they can serve as teaching aids for the first time teacher (practices that I have seen in some English speaking classes where they give set of study matter to the faculty member and he is supported to teach in a standardized format). Another, important tool is how of teacher to make the students learn in management games.

Games which are computer aided can simulate complex real world experience and enable participants to perform defined roles in a competitive setting. IT also promotes communicative among students and between teachers and students. Such technologies can also be used to provide immediate and accurate feedback to the teacher. The use of IT as a pedagogical tool is quiet limited. The key task ahead is to generate enough motivation among the faculty members to upgrade their own slides and insert time in experiments with new forms of teaching.

I do not feel shy in accepting the reality that despite all the benefits of adopting IT cannot be treated as a solution for all educational problems. Moreover, a lot of research is still required to assess the impact of technology on learning and teaching.

2)ISSUES CONCERNING THE CONTRIBUTION OF UNIVERSITIES IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION:-

The second issue that I would like to address is about the relationship between Indian Universities and Management education. Although lot of autonomous institutes have come up and are also making their contribution but I am going to restrict my concerns only about the value that should have been added ( but which has not happened) by such universities to management education because they account for 70%of the output of PG in management.

The activities which add value-teaching, training, consultancy, and research-are not adequately comprehend in the University system. The curriculum is fixed and no mid-course correction or changes are permitted. Curriculum change is made through an actual process that is initiated by Board of Studies and concluded by Academic council. The inadequacy of curriculum is often responsible for the unemployment of University graduates. This is probably the reason why industry is more enthusiastic about recruiting graduates from private, self finance, autonomous institutes in comparison to University graduates.

Another area where value addition can be done is in the area of training and research. Management is a field of study which is very dynamic and practical in nature. Keeping this fact in mind it becomes all important that academicians are in constant touch with the working executives so that they can feel the pulse about what is happening in industries and what are the problems being faced so that research or further studies can be carried out to search the solution. But, this culture is missing and if any training program that any University department conduct basically rely on the networking that few senior faculty members have developed.

1. This again reflects the complacency factor among the University teachers.

Next issue is the hard reality that agencies which can influence the university education are not able to make then impact. Broadly speaking, to some extent AICTE has made impact on the autonomous institutes but almost not at all on the University system. Even the UGC has not been in a position to enforce academic standards with regard to universities system.

The present scenario is not very encouraging but on a positive note we all know that to every problem there is solution that exists what is required in the true will to make things happen. If the readers are kind enough to pardon me, I would like to make following suggestions:

(1) IT should be treated as basic infrastructure in organization.

(2) continuous investment should be made in the development of IT in these education management institutes.

(3) Taking the examples of IIMs, XLRI. I strongly suggest trimester system of education in place of one exam or two exams in a year.

(4) The system of holidays should be different for management departments. It should be done in such a way that holidays are not gained on various festivals, however for major festivals a off of 1-2 days can be permitted.

(5) MBA department of universities should be run as a separate SBU and more autonomy should be provided to these. At the same time the interference in conducting exams or other activities by the respective Universities should be minimum.

Lastly but not the least, I would like to add that if universities do not want themselves to be treated only as a degree granting authority they should take instant & concrete steps to raise the standard of education by paying attention to the above mentioned problems and suggestions.

Let us hope for the best.

Research Associate, ICFAI National College, Pantnagar (INDIA)Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/management-education-delivery-system-980962.html

Whether you are studying in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia, the structure of an academic dissertation is standard.  Academic institutions agree upon how a dissertation should be structure although, of course, each may have more specific guidelines particular to their institution.  A standard dissertation format is presented at the end of this article.

While it is advisable that the dissertation writer adhere to the standard and popularly accepted dissertation structure, they need to incorporate both their university’s specific guidelines and the dictates of their particular topic into the structure.  In other words, the standard structure should be regarded as the starting point from which to compose a customised structure, consistent with both the university’s and the topic’s requirements.

Composing a customised dissertation structure, as stipulated and explain above, could be a rather time-consuming and complicated tasks.  It is, however, one which cannot be ignored because the acceptance or rejection of the study is partially predicated on the extent of adherence to a customised dissertation structure which satisfies the requirements of the standard structure, the topic and the university.  Hence, as complicated and as time-consuming as this step may be, not doing it may prove a disastrous waste of your time since the consequences could be your having to rewrite the entire study.

Any student who confronts difficulties in adhering to the model dissertation structure or in creating a customised structure, needs to know that thessayist.com is here to help them.  Whether you need help in the writing and researching of your entire study, in the composition of your ideal structure or general dissertation research assistance, a member of our Write Right team will be happy to assist you.  With thessayist.com, you can always count on experts to help you out and extend you a service which will exceed your expectations.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Statements and Declaration

Acknowledgements

Abstract

Chapter 1 – Introduction and Overview

1.1: Introduction

1.2: Importance of Topic

1.3: State of the Field

1.4: Field Research Problems

1.5: Dissertation Outline

1.6: Summary

Chapter 2 – Review of the Literature

Subsections to be determined by topic

Chapter 3 – Research Methodology

3.1: Introduction

3.2: Research Background

3.2.1 Research Hypotheses

3.2.2 Research Questions

32.3 Research Objectives

3.3: Research Design and Research Methodology

3.3  Research Purpose

3.3.1 Exploratory

3.3.2 Descriptive

3.3.3 Explanatory

3.3.4 Prescriptive

3.4: Research Approach

3.4.1 The Deductive versus the Inductive Approach?

3.4.2 The Qualitative versus the Quantitative Approach

3.5: Research Strategy

3.5.1 Qualitative Sampling

3.5.2 Qualitative Data Collection

3.5.3 Qualitative Data Handling

3.6: Credibility and Quality of Research Findings

3.6.1 Reliability

3.6.2 Validity

3.6.3 Quality

3.7: Summary

Chapter 4- Results and Discussion

Subsections to be determined by topic

Chapter 5 – Conclusion

5.1: Contributions of the Research

5.2: Implications of the Research

1. 5.2.1    Implications for Theory
2. 5.2.2    Implications for xxx
3. 5.2.3    Implications for Future Research

5.3: Limitations of Study

5.4: Final Conclusion

References

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/model-dissertation-structure-997996.html