In This Issue, 10(1), January 2012

In the earlier issues, I discussed the value chain of knowledge creation in academics, involving the phases of innovative thoughts, development of new materials, application of materials in a classroom setting, evaluation, dissemination, and widespread adoption.  In this issue, the first set of articles under the theme “innovations in pedagogy” investigates innovative pedagogies such as skype, continuous improvement, and attendance policies in classrooms and evaluates their effectiveness. The second set of articles under the theme “innovations in instructional materials” describes how to incorporate materials such as e-textbooks and online exams into business curriculum.   The third set of articles under the theme “Evaluation of instruction” investigates how student evaluations of instructors can be improved.  I am delighted that these articles bring expertise in the different phases of the value chain of knowledge creation in academics.  I hope the authors will continue to write articles that address less-emphasized areas of the value chain.  I encourage the readers and authors to categorize the articles published in the past issues of DSJIE and other journals that publish research in educational pedagogy and research to discover the gaps in knowledge. 

 

You will notice that starting this year, DSJIE is published four times a year, thanks to the initiative of the DSI board, home office, and Wiley-Blackwell publishers.  I believe that this will help establish the reputation of DSJIE further in academics.

 

This issue of DSJIE contains six empirical articles and one teaching brief. I thank the associate editorial team and the reviewers for making it possible to publish these high-quality empirical articles complemented by well-written teaching briefs.  In this issue, I have selected articles and a teaching brief that address different aspects of specific themes and assembled them into coherent groups, allowing readers to study related empirical articles and then discover how instructors have implemented associated concepts in their classrooms. I hope that this set of articles serves as a trigger for eventual changes in curricula in Colleges of Business.

 

Theme I: Innovations in Pedagogy: Three empirical papers anchor this theme.  The conceptual paper, “Integrating Geographic Information Systems Into Business School Curriculum: An Initial Example,” by Michael King and Andrew Arnette discusses the need to include this topic given that businesses depend on a wide array of geographic information system applications.  The empirical paper, “MBA Program Trends and Best Practices in Teaching Sustainability: Live Project Courses,” by Robert Sroufe and Diane Ramos offers a model for incorporating live sustainability consulting projects in an MBA curriculum to nurture cross-functional faculty collaboration while offering students proving ground for solving contemporary challenges related to ethical management of all forms of capital. These articles are supplemented by a teaching brief on “the bicycle assembly line game.”

 

Theme II: Innovations in Pedagogy: An empirical article anchors the next theme on innovations in pedagogy.  The article, “A Comparative Study of Student Math Skills: Perceptions, Validation, and Recommendations,” by Thomas Jones, Barbara Price, and Cindy Randall  determines math deficiencies among college students and ascertains whether or not these deficiencies impact grades.  The readers are provided more opportunities to learn about other innovations in pedagogy in three teaching briefs that address:

 

·       Teaching Introductory Business Statistics using the DCOVA Framework

·       An Experiential Approach to Benchmarking Curriculum

·       Introducing Simulation via the Theory of Records

 

Theme III: Research on On-line Learning Systems: Three empirical research articles and one conceptual article anchor this theme and a teaching brief provides support.  The empirical article, “Socio Economic Status- and Gender-based Differences in Students’ Perceptions of E-Learning Systems,” by Leslie Albert and Camille Johnson takes a first look into how students’ perceptions of e-learning systems, prior to their enrollment in an online course, vary across socio-economic status and gender.  Another article, “The Impacts of System and Human Factors on Online Learning Systems Use and Learner Satisfaction,” by Khaled Alshare, Ronald Freeze, Peggy Lane, and H. Joseph Wen illuminates the unique contributions of human factors (comfort with online learning, self-management of learning, and perceived web self-efficacy) to online learning success, which is measured in terms of usage and satisfaction.  The third article, “Design Features for Online Examination Software,” by Gerald Post and Jace Hargis is designed to identify common features of online examination software that could be used across disciplines in higher education.  A conceptual paper, “Course Management Systems and Blended Learning: An Innovative Learning Approach,” by Amy Chou and David Chou creates an innovative learning map that illustrates three learning methods (i.e., face-to-face learning, online-learning, and blended learning) in two types of innovation (i.e., incremental innovation and radical innovation) that exhibits the behavior and dynamics on a two dimensional area of learning changes (i.e., change in learning model and change in technological infrastructure).  These articles are supplemented by a teaching brief that discusses:

• Teaching Cases in a Virtual World Environment:  When the Traditional Case Classroom is Problematic

 

I am very impressed with the high quality of articles that are submitted to DSJIE.  The reviewers and editorial team make an exemplary effort in providing developmental comments to the authors in revising the manuscripts.  I thank them for their contributions to DSJIE. 

 

I expect that the articles presented in this issue will motivate you to conduct new research studies on learning, pedagogies, and instructional materials thus furthering knowledge in the field, and hope that you will continue to contribute to the literature by writing empirical articles, case study articles, conceptual articles, and teaching briefs for DSJIE.  Please check the website www.dsjie.org for information on submission information.

 

 

Chetan S. Sankar

Editor