PROJECT ABSTRACT
The Principles of Marketing course is being sustained. This course is a required for all business majors, a kinesiology major, and serves as the foundation course for all of the Marketing Options (i.e., Marketing, Retailing and International Business). Due to the large number of business and non-business majors taking the course it is designated as a bottleneck course within the California State University (CSU) System. The focus of the Sustaining Success project is to continue to student success and teaching effectiveness achieved from the Proven Course Redesign with Technology (CRT) from the two previous years for the bottleneck course Principles of Marketing in an online teaching modality. The impact of the CRT with this sustaining success project is to improve the course GPA and the pass rate. This sustaining success project goal is to improve the leading indicators associated with bottleneck courses (e.g., traditional low pass rate, poor course GPA, and the difficulty of enrolling in the course all factors that impact students’ time to degree and success in the CSU. The focus for this sustaining success project is to determine anamolies, and repeatable outcomes from the previous two years using CRT.
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The Proven CRT started to address these bottleneck issues by redesigning the course to be 100% online that incorporated a Quality Matters (QM) course redesign an review with the involvement of course designers. During Year 1 (Academic Year 2014-15) the results of implementing the Proven CRT was mixed. The DFW rate was higher, a higher number of students were enrolled in the course especially among Course Match students, and the GPA was lower than other Principles of Marketing courses that did not implement a CRT. However, during Year 2 (Academic Year 2015-16) the results of implementing the Proven CRT was positive among all key leading indicators relative to other Principles of Marketing courses. One of the main changes implemented with the Proven CRT in Year 2 was the use of instructional designers in designing the course and the use of additional assessment activities (e.g., discussion forums, webinars). The focus for the Sustaining Success project is to determine if Year 1 results was an anomaly. Additionally we will identify if Year 2 changes are repeatable and sustainable as compared to Year 1 by utilizing instructional designers and additional technology. The direction is to do a 2-way split test by having one Principles of Marketing course designed similar to Year 2 and have a second Principles of Marketing course designed adding in additional factors (e.gs., technology, assessments and activities) with the assistance of an instructional designer.
The goals of the project is to reduce repeatable grades, improve student success and increase enrollment in the Principles of Marketing course. We will collect data from the Institutional Research for the Principles of Marketing for non-CRT courses and CRT courses on: the number of student enrollments (including Course Match students), the DFW rate trends, the repeatable grades, and the GPA rate trends. We expect continued improvements in the metrics for each of these course indicators as part of this sustained success project.
SPEAKING CALENDAR
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COLUMN 2 (IN-PROGRESS)
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BACKGROUND
The sustaining success project is successful if it achieves the continuation of lowering the DFW rate, improving in the course GPA and pass rate. The previous course redesign efforts had mixed results in lowering the DFW and pass rate as well as improving the GPA. The goal of this sustaining success project was to improve upon the success of the previous year (2015-16) CRT project. The sustaining success built upon the publisher’s resources (McGraw-Hill LearnSmart) as well as integrating the Connect environment into the Moodle LMS. In addition, additional the student case and video assignments were expanded. Finally, students were asked to provide a self-video interview to describe what did they learn in the course, their most favorite topic. Students also had to indicate what they liked about the design of the course and what would they improve. These self-interview feedback provides another feedback on the effectiveness and areas of improvement for the sustained redesigned course project.
SUSTAIN CRT SUCCESS
PROJECT ACTIVITIES
Student learners in the sustained success course had to complete both individual and team activities/deliverables. The completed project activities and deliverables for the sustaining success project were: pre and post student surveys, LearnSmart chapter assignments, quizzes, exams, discussion forums, team case project, self-video interview, and an individual learner video case assignment.
The outcomes for the sustaining success project allowed student learners to achieve the outcomes that was designed into the sustained success course. The outcomes for the sustaining success project were: student readiness assessment in taking online courses; critically evaluate the strategic role of marketing in the lives of consumers, companies and organizations; list and articulate the marketing-mix; interpret the concepts of market research, segmentation, and product positioning; interpret and analyze the consumer decision-making process and the variables that influence consumer buyer behavior; interpret and analyze the unique characteristics of business customers and business buyer behavior; critically evaluate the forces in the market environment and develop a comprehensive environmental scan of the industry.
The project benefited the department because it lays the groundwork for future online teaching for the foundation course both for the department and the college. Since Principles of Marketing is a bottleneck course the campus and the CSU system benefits from increasing the access of this course to Cal State LA students as well as CSU students at other campuses through the CSU Course Match program. This course redesign model has the benefit of setting the requirements for faculty development in order to teach an online course. The college is leveraging the success and expertise of those faculty who have gone the CSU CRT program to designate the training and requirements standards to teach a fully online course. The expertise of the previous CRT and this sustaining success project will develop the template for faculty who teach the Principles of Marketing course. The sustaining success will provide faculty the opportunity of improving their design and delivery of curricula including delivering new teaching modalities that can aid in the RTP process.
PROJECT TEAM
The project team for the sustaining success project included the following Cal State LA campus resources: Catherine Haras, Campus Coordinator; Tye W. Jackson, Chair and Participation Instructor; Center for Effective Teaching and Learning (CETL) – Jeffrey Suarez-Grant, Maria Fernandez, Instructional Designers.
Cal State LA’s students are indicative of many of the CSUs in large urban cities whereby students are one of the most culturally, ethnically, and gender diverse student populations in the nation. The Department of Marketing (DOM) students and faculty are diverse. The DOM faculty is the most diverse among all departments at Cal State LA. Currently there have been eight out of the twelve tenure track faculty members who have taken some technology enabled course (e.g., Quality Matters, QOLT) training. We have also had two out of the seven adjunct faculty to have similar training. In addition, we have two tenure-track faculty including the chair of the department who have attended the CRT through the Chancellor’s Office. The department’s goal is to have ninety-percent of the faculty (tenure-track and adjunct) trained in technology-enabled and receive CRT hands-on training using different teaching modalities (e.g., hybrid, online, and flipped) by the ending of 2018.
