MARKETING MATERIAL
7235 MEG93 - Conferencing for Marketing Students
COMPUTER CONFERENCING FOR MARKETING STUDENTS
D. S. Mercer
Open University School of Management,
Address for correspondence:
David Mercer, School of Management, Open University,
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA
Tel: 0908 655888 Fax: 0908 655898
ABSTRACT
The paper describes a successful development of computer conferencing in the context of teaching marketing students who are working in small groups. The main operating factors emerged from the students' demand for positive benefits to be directly derived from the content, with technical ease of use being only a facilitator.
INTRODUCTION
The Open University (OU) is one of the few institutions which has an extended track record of running large scale computer conferences in a teaching environment. In common with similar courses in other universities, however, most of these students are studying IT; so computer conferencing is taught as a technical subject and the medium really is the message.
On the other hand, students from the Open Business School (OBS), otherwise known as the School of Management, within the OU are normally practising managers with little or no special IT expertise; or any great wish to acquire this. In this rather different context computer conferencing simply becomes another means of communication. Its use needs, therefore, to be as simple and transparent as possible - any problems detract from its value, where they may actually enhance the learning experiences of IT students.
This paper describes the results obtained from the first stage of development in using computer conferencing as a teaching tool for students taking part in the B885 (The Challenge of the External Environment) course. As this is a marketing related course, where marketing students are traditionally expected to be amongst the most computer illiterate, this was seen to be a particularly severe test of the techniques involved!
The conferencing system chosen was CoSy[1], of which the OU has had a number of years experience - across several thousand users. It was a technically stable system which offered most of the basic features needed by OBS students. It was accessible to students throughout the United Kingdom for the price of a local phone call, and its central telephone support centre already has considerable expertise in dealing with student problems. The technical problems which bedevil many new ventures were, thus, minimised. The remaining, 'non-technical', criteria were:
Technical Ease Of Use
Even so, the main problem was originally seen to be the substantial technical hurdle to be overcome by students (especially for 'marketing' students). Despite their lack of expertise, these students had to learn the CoSy system in the shortest possible time (1-2 weeks) with little or no direct support from the OU.
Social Ease Of Use
Students also required guidance on the practical use of the content, and on the complexities of using a new means of communication. Computer conferencing, if it was to be used as a practical channel for communication rather than as a limited technical exercise ( especially where marketers are typically less happy with written communications), demanded that students learned new rules of conduct - new etiquette if not new grammar.
Incentives To Use
It was recognised that, above all, there had to be very strong reasons for the students to make use of the system; clear benefits which would persuade them to participate in a form of communication which was perhaps five to ten years of its time (and outside of the normal range of skills such 'marketing' students might be expected to possess).
IMPLEMENTATION
As a result of the observations emerging from a pilot on an earlier course (B882, Creative Management), the course in this development, 'The Challenge of the External Environment', was redesigned so that its first (1992) computer conferences incorporated the following key features, (and was further redesigned - albeit only on a limited scale - for the 1993 conferences to take account of the 1992 results);
Tutor Support
The 34 tutors involved in 1992 were initially provided with a weekend training school; which 80% attended. This represented a start-up investment of approaching £10,000. Subsequently their performance was closely monitored and supervised, and further help provided where necessary. In 1992 the 40 tutors (who were made up of those who had handled conferencing well in 1992, with the addition of some newly trained recruits) were given more personal support and were even more closely monitored.
Direct Student Incentives
OU students are, along with most university students, most highly motivated to undertake work if it directly relates to the core of their studies; and especially if it relates to the assessment of that core. Use of CoSy on the course was, therefore, assessed - though a non-CoSy alternative was also available. The assessment was also, for the first time within the OU, linked to team-work; to encourage the formation of self-help groups, initially based on the use of CoSy within existing tutor groups. The only 1993 change needed, in this context, was a limited variation in timings and slightly revised instructions.
Indirect Incentives
National conferences had been relatively successful in the pilot, so these were again provided; but reinforced by the introduction of experts on subjects of direct relevance to course-work. In the second year this was extended to include a major continuing conference; the 'Millenium Project'.
RESULTS
The most detailed results were obtained from a survey of all 1992 students; completed at the end of the course by 353 of the 460 students on the course (a 76% response rate). In addition they are based upon an analysis of the conferences involved, as well as of the results of a shorter questionnaire handed out at residential schools, which took place approximately half way through the course; to which 302 students responded (a 66% response rate). These results were supplemented by observations made on the use of the redesigned systems by the 570 students who took the course in 1993.
(Relatively) Successful Outcome
By far the most important result, and one which had not been predicted by the pilot work (and was even more unexpected in view of the 'marketing' interests of the students), was that the computer conferences were successful - meeting and surpassing our most optimistic expectations (though it should be noted that these expectations had been lowered by the poor pilot results). This success was evident from a number of measures:
Overall Penetration
Based upon the results from the initial survey it would seem that nearly three quarters of those on the course (75% of those answering the main survey, supported by the 73% figure for those answering the interim survey) made some significant use of the computer conferencing offered. This was the same as the level achieved, after several years of growth, on the OU's IT course. It seems to show that wider acceptance of computer conferencing may pose less problems than was expected, even amongst students, such as those in marketing, who are expected to be 'computer-phobes'!
Satisfaction
On the other hand, CoSy was not seen to be an unqualified success. Most users wanted changes to the system - including better technical usability and people usage. Nevertheless nearly half (46%) of those using it found it fairly or very useful at the interim stage; which is comparable with the results on the OU IT course after several years of experience, again indicating that there may be relatively few insuperable problems even for a technically inexpert audience.
Numbers Of Conferences
The number of major conferences, 34, was in line with expectations; representing conferences hosted by the 90% of tutors who did support their students (a similar, 90%, support level was recorded in 1993), together with three national conferences. On the other hand, the overall number of active conferences was 99. This indicated a level of (spontaneous) activity which was much greater than expected. The 1993 figures were very similar (with 89 active conferences).
Message Rates
Three quarters (74%) of the main conferences recorded thirty or more messages; and two fifths (38%) logged more than a hundred - indicating a high level of activity. The 1993 figures were slightly lower (at 55% recording thirty or more messages and 27% ten or more) but the average was still 68 messages per conference.
Conference Membership
The majority of the conferences were based upon tutor groups (which typically contain 20 students), and hence most (54%) of their membership levels fell in the range 10-19 members (and 73% in the range 10-29 members).
Tutor Support
Although overall the level of tutor support (at 90%) was deemed successful by the course team, only 21% of the students using CoSy rated their tutor support as very/fairly high, and a further 31% rated it moderate.
Technical Problems
Some 40% of students had technical problems with CoSy (and 55% of these were rated very/fairly serious).
Small (Tutorial) Group Work
In practical terms, for teaching at least, a no less important an outcome was that smaller groups, even those without any previous (shared) group identity, can work productively with each other. The great majority (31) of the core conferences were based upon small (tutor) groups (typically with only 20 students - of whom normally less than 16 participated in the conferences), and yet they generally worked together without obvious any problems.
More surprising was the fact that many of the sub-groups, usually with no more than six core members, also worked well - despite the fact that these members had no shared interests other than those of the conference; though these very small groups were less stable in terms of maintaining membership over the longer term.
This success of this aspect of the conferencing was evidenced by the fact that the usage was reportedly highest for this work, at 57% of students, as was the usefulness (59% of students saying it was very/fairly useful).
It would appear, therefore, that computer conferences can be used - again under the right circumstances - for joint work in small groups by previously unrelated memberships.
Expert Conferences
One surprising result was that the optional 'expert conferences' or 'master-classes', where an outside expert (such as Graham Galer of Shell) led a conference about a directly related subject (in his case 'Scenarios'), were used by 44% of the students (compared with 59% for the 'mandatory' course work and 45% for tutor groups). Nearly two thirds of students (62%) also found such conferences very/fairly useful.
This unexpected success persuaded us to start a continuing 'expert' conference for students, once more with outside contributors: 'The Millenium Project'. This has proved, after significant investment of effort (by the Strategic Planning Society and the DEMOS thinktank - both of whose members were involved - as well as ourselves), to be a success in its own right. One topic, an on-going debate about ethics, has so far recorded more than 1,500 messages. On the other hand, it has not been used by large numbers of the B885 students - probably because it was less directly related to specific course topics!
The use of conferencing as a vehicle for the traditional 'case studies' used by business schools to deliver 'practical' experience to groups of students proved less successful; with a maximum usage of 40% (and 40% reporting very/fairly useful) and a minimum of 25% usage (and only 10% very/fairly useful).
Limitations
The majority of students were, on the other hand, less than complimentary about some aspects of their experience of computer conferencing. Their complaints included:
Technical Problems
With 40% of students reporting problems with CoSy (55% of these very/fairly serious), they felt they had been subjected to too many technical distractions (partly from the system itself, but particularly from PTT line problems) and that the hardware/software involved was clumsy and out of date. This is a problem which must await the development of better software
Organisational Problems
They felt that the social interfaces had not been as well structured (and maintained) as they would like. This should be resolved as those involved (especially the tutors - whose 21% support rating as very/fairly high, above, is still a limiting factor) gain experience.
Lack Of Wider Context
Despite these perceived problems one of the major criticisms was that computer conferencing was not available on other courses, so that the students could use their new skills in a wider context. This should be resolved within the OBS when more courses use computer conferencing as an integral part of their teaching; and all our MBA courses now offer at least one conference for their students.
Value For Money
Indeed the main problem (evidenced by the 46% who thought CoSy not very good value) would seem to have been that students calculated the investment they put into the course (partly in the money required to purchase a modem and partly in terms of their learning curve) and balanced this against the practical use they could make of the skills they had learned - in this case this was limited to the duration of the one course. This again needs to be addressed by making the use of such conferencing more widely applicable across other courses run by the OBS.
CONCLUSIONS
The main finding was that computer conferencing may be well received and well used by 'marketing' users - even if they have no other direct membership links and are working in small groups.
Based upon the experiences of this course, it would appear that, with further experience, the level of students demonstrating symptoms of computer conferencing alienation (or 'illiteracy') might be more generally held to below 20%. Certainly, up to three quarters of these students were able to make use of the system; and, despite the problems resulting from inexperience inevitable on the first running of such a course, almost half of these found conferencing useful.
It seems probable that the requirements for success most directly relate to the benefits to be obtained from the content, and thus are more akin to the commonly recognised requirements of the popular media rather than the technicalities of computing.
The main requirement by such 'marketing' students would, unsurprisingly, appear to be that the conferences must directly offer them a very positive benefit, which cannot be more easily achieved by any other means. The same way that daily papers are taken because the reader finds the content directly useful, in the context of these inexpert audiences, it is the content of a conference which is most important. The role of the moderators (mainly, in this case, the tutors) would seem to be central.
Technical factors are only required to facilitate the transactions, though in the current state of development they still intrude significantly on the smooth running of the related systems.
The main 'producer' role, therefore, is to invest in the quality of the content - which must be directly relevant to the immediate needs of the students - and to stimulate the emergence of the key 'product champions' (especially suitable moderators) who will maintain the desired level of activity.
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