By Vanessa Broadbent (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 28, 2015
“The future” has finally arrived at UFV — but not with hoverboards and flying cars like Back to the Future promised us.
Instead, marketing and media professor Cindy Stewart’s BUS329 course, Brand Identity Management, is the first at UFV to offer televised lectures. The class is like any other third year class — except one out of the three lecture hours are TV episodes students can watch outside of class time.
BUS329 aims to teach students the theory of brand management, as well as how to use software to create brand images. UFV has collaborated with ontrackTV, a local Vancouver company that specializes in computer training and study skills technology, to add a different learning medium.
This semester is the first for the videos, but Stewart has already noticed the benefit of having “watch at home” lectures.
“Having the instructor sit in a classroom, basically stand at a computer, and show you how to navigate through software, to me, is not the best use of my time,” she says. “The vignettes are designed to do that in a very quick, engaging way so that the students not only learn, but they have the ability to go back and replay it.”
Students are finding it different from their regular classes, but have mostly positive feedback. Business student Carissa Greenlees has noticed that her learning has improved because of the course’s different teaching style.
“You have the theory part with the lectures and then you have the hands-on part with the tutorials, so you’re getting two different parts of how to learn,” she says.
The partnership between UFV and ontrackTV, a branch of Quizam Media Corporation, is coming at no apparent cost to UFV. However, Stewart has helped develop their program.
“In exchange for that free access, I have helped align their face-to-face course delivery with the online tools,” she says. “When this is over it’s a win-win for both of us because they’ll be able to take my work, and package that, and sell it to clients in the business community.”
The partnership also comes with a condition. Because online lectures are a new form of learning, UFV has agreed to help ontrackTV by conducting research to test if this learning style is beneficial to students.
Director of the School of Business Frank Ulbrich noted that the partnership does not necessarily mean influenced research results.
“As in all research there is a risk of bias but we will do all we can to control for it,” he says in an email.
The success of students taking BUS329 with the online lecture component will be compared to the success of students taking the same course with only in-class lectures. Stewart hopes to publish a paper in an academic journal about the results.
“They’re giving it to us for free and the exchange is we’re going to do this research and learn if there’s an added value depending on the learning style,” she says.
Students are aware they are the first class to try the TV videos and be the subject of research. “It’s exciting, because you’re kind of playing the guinea pig,” Greenlees says.
If the research shows that the online lecture component is successful, which Ulbrich thinks it will be, other business classes could be taught in the same manner in the future.
“Our hypothesis is it will be a more effective learning experience for our students, resulting in better student performance,” he said in an email. “If BUS329 proves to effectively support students in their learning, the School of Business will further investigate whether this style of learning might be transferrable into other business courses in the future, and whether it might lead to a more formal partnership with Quizam in the future.”
Quizam’s services are tailored for computer skills and training, so there is no foreseeable possibility of online lecture spreading into other areas of study.
