MA Course 3

The last session covered classical management theory and began with the types of businees organisation and then worked through the theorists between 1910 - 1976. The classical theories focussed on getting the organisation right and was mostly about structure and function.

Writers covered included Fayol, Taylor (scientific management) and the Gilbreth's, Gantt, Mayo & the Hawthorne studies, Urwick (from Fayol), Brech (social process), and Weber (legitimate authority and bureaucracy).

On the teaching side of things I'm beginning to think that the Cisco course is too prescriptive and not really that well suited for adult learners. I've decided that in order to help the students integrate the theoretical knowledge better the course work and practical work needs to be better integrated into the sessions. Too often the students try to avoid the practical work until the end of the course.

The case studies also need to be re-written to focus on the problem solving aspects of the work rather than concentrating on too many specifics. It would probably also help to make this a group excercise to allow students to interact with each other as this could reinforce learning and enable students to share experience. It would also free up the equipment for general lab work and skills tests which do work through the specifics and allow more individual and group work time with the hardware.

The format of the course could also use some revision - from discussions with the students it seems clear that twilight sessions aren't necessarily the best option. The concensus is that a day session would be more productive and allow the students to get to the session more easily as it is always harder to get out of work than to travel directly to a course.

Again insight into the barriers to lifelong learning from my excellent students. Other barriers seem to be around finding time to study and with keeping up to date with the curriculum. Given that the course was originally designed to be taught to US high school students it is aimed at a large number of short sessions, something that just isn't possible for adult learners, it requires the students to do a large amount of reading in their own time and this seems to be the area that causes problems for students. They then use the taught sessions to catch up on the reading rather than the practical lab work.

The nature of the assessment tends towards being closed - a multiple choice final assessment on the theory content. The case study does allow for some creativity and problem solving, though the skills test is again an exam although a practical one. As an instructor the only leeway is in the way that these components, and any other additional ones, add up to the final pass/fail for each semester.