Factors of Management Education in India as Perceived by Learners and Providers: An Empirical Study

Abstract

From the very genesis of management education as a formal discipline of study during early nineteenth century, it has undergone many changes in terms of content development, curriculum development and pedagogy. The systems prevailing in India preach the methodology of classroom lecture with intermittent or limited use of technology tools to impart education. However, under the present setting, the study partakes to find out the perception of students or learners and academicians and corporate or providers of management education towards a winning pedagogy from the myriad of traditional classroom and e-learning pedagogies suiting individual’s learning requirement resulting in higher learning gain. Traditional classroom teaching and Web-based instructional system (WBIS) of e-learning pedagogy have contributed to identify the variables of management education in this paper. From the observed variables, it was revealed that respondents preferred WBIS over traditional school of thought and another dimension of management education, that is, blended learning involving characteristics from the other two schools surfaced as the third factor.

Keywords

Blended Learning e-Learning Digital Management Education WBIS

Introduction

Management education has been widely recognized as one of the most important means for development. Although history of management education dates back to ancient times, however modern management education found its formal structure during 1819 as ESCP,¹ Paris, France and more famously in 1881 as Wharton Business School at Pennsylvania University, USA.² Since then, the content and pedagogy have come under many purposeful modernization efforts to keep pace with present industry requirements. Management education demands huge infrastructure to provide the learners necessary simulated environ-ment for the desired output. The need for such extensive infrastructure made management education expensive and remained confined to a limited people of the society leaving a deserving population of the society. The pertaining scenario created an urbanized privileged class and the idea of developing the masses got defeated (Mukherjee, 2012). Most importantly, the management education framework is strategically attributed by the idea of developing cognitive aspects of a manager (Sharma, 2005). To accomplish this aim, the educational planners have worked endlessly and came up with a ‘proactive strategic approach’ towards learning in the form of ‘e-learning’. Any individual who undertakes a course with sole intention to learn can be defined as a learner. Under digital learning environment, a learner interacts with the learning environment to augment learning prescriptions for a personalized learning solution embedded into the learner’s natural environment. The type interactions are learner–learner, learner–instructor and learner–content (Moore, 1989). Since, in digital space instructor led training often complemented through digital content to bridge geographic distances, a common term of provider has been used here to identify teachers, digital content and peer group learning through the learning environment collectively. Moore’s (1993) theory of transactional distance corroborates the fact that structure of communication and quality of interaction are important in bridging the gap caused due to geographical distance. Traditionally, stakeholders have been identified as owners, employees, suppliers, financiers, communities, government agencies and sometimes competitors also (Freeman, 1984). Donaldson and Preston (1995) identified three distinct approaches to their stakeholder theory, that is, descriptive, instrumental and normative. Descriptive approach identifies with the behaviour of organizations, the people and the way people think about running the business processes including the organization as a whole. Instrumental approach is an empirical analysis of profitability by identifying the relationship between the management of an organization and its achievement of goals. However, the normative approach is considered to be the core of this theory where organizational functions are examined in the light of moral and philosophical values of the organization. Therefore, the present study identifies the policy makers, people responsible for preparation of syllabi, content development, dissemination and learners as stakeholders. Robert Phillips (2003) has made a significant contribution to the stakeholders theory by identifying the relationship between normatively legitimate stake-holders (learners in this study) and derivatively legitimate stakeholders whose stakeholder status has been obtained from their ability to influence the organization or its normatively legitimate stakeholders (providers in this study).

Digital learning (e-learning) has gained acceptance and momentum at different levels of education, that is, pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary education while the format remains either pure online or a blend of pure online and traditional learning mode (Liu and Hwang, 2010). With the design and development of modern learning technologies, traditional classroom-based direct transmission model of learning has been altered by flexible and individualized learning environment. The sojourn from rigid mono-directional instructional system to flexible self-paced democratic learning environment took decades to shape up and is still growing. The acceptance of e-learning among the learners is visible with learner centric autonomy where subjectivity and learner’s autonomy are respected diluting geographic boundaries that essentially results in higher learning gain (Laurillard, 2002). Earlier contributions from Biglan (1973a, 1973b) which was further popularized by Becher and Trowler (2001) suggested that there are three major dichotomies of higher education: practicality (pure/applied), paradigm development (hard/soft) and object of study (life/non-life). Biglan’s model drew a spectrum of traditional learning environ-ment without a mention of education technology. The major focus was on transmission model of learning rather than developing a technology-mediated learning model. However, education technology has surfaced as an important field of study and it is seen from two different perspectives, that is, scholarly and professionally (Czerniewicz, 2008).

Stakeholders responsible for planning of management education are grappling with the dilemma of using techno-logy in education and inculcate the same as a part of the curriculum. Intermittent use of technology in education has been prevailing since long. Researchers from digital school of thought have been lamenting marginal use of technology in Indian management education system as till today the education system is highly influenced by traditional philosophy of chalk and talk for reasons more than ones. On the other hand, tremendous success of e-learning pedagogy of Europe and US states has proved the efficacy and efficiency of technology use in higher education in its pure form. In India, both formats of imparting management education, that is, pure formal or traditional class room lecture method and pure e-learning, that is, lecture delivery and content sharing over a technology platform could not result in higher learning gain rather technology is used as a tool to communicate the existing learning models (Bhaumik, 2012). Hence, it becomes evident to identify distinguishing characteristics of management education which could absorb the best components of both formats as mentioned previously and blend them to yield a potential format that could capture the nuances of management education in India resulting in higher learning gain (Mukherjee, 2012). However, while talking about computer-mediated learning in synchronous and asynchronous mode, Web-based instructional system (WBIS) has provided learner a great level of flexibility towards ubiquitous learning (Frank and Barzilai, 2008). Dimensions of management education can be categorized as pedagogy, learner’s autonomy and experiential learning. Under these three major dimensions, the variables of management education under e-learning pedagogy and traditional pedagogy across both formats have been identified and shown in Table 1.

Another dimension of content has not been considered in this study as a separate dimension because content precedes all other three dimensions. While pedagogy and experiential learning identify with the delivery component of management education, learner’s autonomy in selection of a specific course adds to academic freedom. Papp (2000) had suggested that besides content and technology environment, suitability of the curriculum is an important factor for success of e-learning. Benigno and Trentin (2000), while measuring student’s perception towards e-learning pedagogy, focused on learning gain while giving due credence to learner’s autonomy as it has a direct bearing on individual’s learning gain.

Table 1.

Dimensions of Management Education

Pedagogy	Chalk and talk
	Fixed curriculum
	Teacher as sage on the stage
	Fixed learning routine
	Limited range specialization
	Self-paced learning
	Teacher as moderator
Learner’s autonomy	Flexible learning environment
	Flexible curriculum development
	Contextual and choice-based learning
Experiential learning	Collaborative learning
	Peer group evaluation
	Peer group learning
	Real-life problem analysis

This paper is an attempt to analyze the factors of management education as perceived by learners and providers of management education in India.

Literature Review

While designing the theoretical backbone of this study, three major works have been referred, that is, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). TRA (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980) talks of individual behaviour and attitude towards learning and advocates that an individual’s behaviour is governed by the intention of the individual to perform the behaviour. The selection of WBIS by the students may not be the choice of the individual student rather it might be the outcome of a peer pressure and pressure from the teachers which might have influenced the student to take WBIS as an instructional medium. TAM (Davis, 1989) was derived from TRA and talks of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of IT are two important determinants in predicting individual’s acceptance and use of IT. SCT talks about an individual’s ability to explain, select and influence the environment with cognitive factors while being influenced by environments while three dimensions of human character, that is, personal factors, behaviour and factors of environment are reciprocally interrelated (Bandura, 1986). While SCT states that students of higher education can build self-confidence to use WBIS to perform a task given in the college, the basic premise of this study becomes very clear that whether in India the students of management education can build that kind of self-confidence to perform tasks online using a WBIS. Table 2 provides the literature background for identifying the relevant variables for the study.

Table 2.

Variables of Management Education from Literature

Individual Variables	References
Flexible learning environment	Alexander et al. (1998), Khan (2001), Soong et al. (2001), Volery and Lord (2000), Govindasamy (2001)
Flexible curriculum development
Contextual and choice-based learning
Self-paced learningPeer group learning	Alexander et al. (1998), Khan (2001), Soong et al. (2001), Papp (2000), Govindasamy (2001), Dillon and Gunawardena (1995), Leidner and Jarvenpaa (1995)
Collaborative learningPeer group evaluation
Real-life problem analysis	Alexander et al. (1998), Khan (2001), Webster and Hackley (1997), Selim (2007), Govindasamy (2001)
Teacher as a moderator
Chalk and talk	Blignaut et al. (1998), Becker and Watts (2001), Navarro (2008), Graham et al. (1992), Biggs (1999)
Fixed curriculum
Teacher as sage on the stage
Fixed learning routine
Limited range specialization

Methodology

Data Collection

In order to collect necessary data to meet the research objective, both primary and secondary sources of data were used. Primary data were collected through a structured questionnaire from academicians and students of management studies across various specializations in both government and private academic institutions and from corporate who are either responsible for training function or involved in the development process of e-learning programmes or someway connected to or aware of e-learning pedagogy across industries. The respondents, that is, teachers of management subjects, students of two-year full-time postgraduate management curriculum and people from industry were selected through random sampling. A pilot survey was conducted to measure the effectiveness and appropriateness of the questionnaire with 30 respondents including teachers, students and corporate. The study brings forth a pan India perspective with representation from major Indian cities such as Delhi and NCR, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and smaller cities such as Lucknow, Roorkie and Mangalore.

Pilot Study

A pilot study was carried out with 30 respondents. Using probabilistic sampling method of confidence interval approach, the paper got 222 samples for study. In confidence interval approach, sample size n = (Zv)²/e² where Z is confidence level, v is the standard deviation and e is allowable error of this estimate. The paper estimates the sample size at 90 per cent confidence level with 10 per cent allowable error level. After giving due consideration to the responses generated out of the structured questionnaire, a final draft of the questionnaire was prepared for survey. The geography of the pilot study has been restricted to Delhi and NCR only. The respondents were approached personally, telephonically and through mails.

Sampling Plan

Sample Element (as well as Sample Unit)

The samples for the purpose of study are the following:

Academicians: Faculty members teaching in Busi-ness Management programme, responsible for curriculum deve-lopment and content design with minimum 3 years of overall experience.

Students: Students pursuing 2-year full-time postgraduate management programme and are the final year of their programme. Students with previous work experience have been preferred.

Corporate: People from industry who are directly or indirectly associated with development, selling of e-learning applications or involved in training function.

Academicians and corporate together have been referred to as provider of management education, whereas students have been referred to as learner in this study (Table 3).

Data Analysis and Presentation

MS Excel 2007 and SPSS (version 16) are used for tabulation and data analysis and various graphs are used for data presentation.

Data Analysis and Model Build

The null hypothesis, that is the variables are uncorrelated in population, is rejected by the Bartlett’s test of sphericity. The approximate chi-square statistic is 1190.6 with 91 degrees of freedom, which is significant at the 0.01 level. The value of Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) statistic (0.784) is also large (>0.5). Thus, factor analysis may be considered as an appropriate technique for analyzing these data (Table 4).

Figure 1.

Scree Plot

Table 3.

Sample Profile of Respondents

Sample Descriptors		Profile
Sample size (N = 221)	70 Academicians	137 Students	14 Corporate
Area	Major Indian cities	Major Indian cities	Major Indian cities
Percentage of respondents	31.68	61.99	6.33
Sampling method	Random sampling	Random sampling	Random sampling
Inclusion criteria	Minimum three years of overall work experience	One year of completed management education	Professional exposure to e-learning environment

Table 4.

KMO and Bartlett’s Test

Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy		0.784
Bartlett’s test of Sphericity	approx. chi-square	1.190E3
	DF	91
	Sig.	0.000

Table 5 shows rotated component matrix with loadings that are extracted and considered relevant to the constructed are highlighted in bold. The exploratory factor analysis shows that 14 variables are loaded on three distinct factors thus resulting in explaining 63 per cent variance of the data. The Cronbach’s alpha for these factors show good reliability values (α > 0.5).

Table 5.

Rotated Factor Matrixa

	Component
	1	2	3
Chalk and talk	0.215	0.534	0.182
Fixed curriculum	–0.135	0.838	–0.028
Teacher as sage on the stage	–0.100	0.840	–0.053
Fixed learning routine	–0.012	0.730	0.025
Limited range of specialization	–0.128	0.762	–0.038
Collaborative learning	0.889	–0.092	0.085
Flexible learning environment	0.898	–0.096	0.030
Peer group evaluation	0.844	0.090	–0.028
Flexible curriculum development	0.892	–0.103	–0.078
Peer group learning	0.066	–0.112	0.749
Self-paced learning	–0.017	–0.004	0.700
Teacher as moderator	0.052	0.054	0.819
Real-life problem analysis	–0.020	0.003	0.785
Contextual and choice-based learning	–0.046	0.106	0.600
Eigen values	3.461	2.788	2.579
% of variance explained	24.720	19.913	18.424
% of cumulative variance explained	24.720	44.633	63.057
Cronbach’s a	0.907	0.799	0.788

Note: ^aRotation converged in four iterations.

From rotated factor matrix, it can be observed that variables collaborative learning, flexible learning environment, peer group evaluation and flexible curriculum development have high loading, that is, 0.889, 0.898, 0.844 and 0.892, respectively, under factor 1. From the un-rotated factor matrix as well, we can observe that the same variables have high loading on factor 1. This suggests that factor 1 is best explained as a combination of these four variables such as collaborative learning, flexible learning environment, peer group evaluation and flexible curriculum development. Therefore, factor 1 represents the perception of respondents who responded in favour of adopting WBIS as a formal instructional medium to offer management education should be an Agile System. Variables chalk and talk, fixed curriculum, teachers as sage on the stage, fixed learning routine and limited range of specialization have high loading, that is, 0.534, 0.838, 0.840, 0.730 and 0.762, respectively, on factor 2. Therefore, the combination of these five variables represents the perception of respondents, who wish to continue with traditional system, can be termed as traditionalists. Variables peer group learning, self-paced learning, teacher as moderator, real-life problem analysis, contextual and choice-based learning have high loading, that is, 0.749, 0.700, 0.819, 0.785 and 0.600, respectively, on factor 3. Therefore, the combination of these five variables represents the perception of respondents, who wish to continue with blended format of learning imbibing factors of both traditional and e-learning pedagogy, can be termed as blended learning. Further, the third factor explains 18.424 per cent of variance which is not very less than factor 2 (19.913 per cent). The relative importance of factor 3 is not significantly less than factor 2 rather the researcher would like to mention here that the respondents have kept both factors 2 and 3 at the almost same pedestal and blended learning being a relatively new concept gaining momentum in the minds of both learner and provider (Table 6).

Table 6.

Extracted Factors

Sl. No.	Factor	No.	Item
1	WBIS (Agile System)	6	Collaborative learning
		7	Flexible learning environment
		8	Peer group evaluation
		9	Flexible curriculum development
2	Traditional learning system	1	Chalk and talk
		2	Fixed curriculum
		3	Teacher as sage on the stage
		4	Fixed learning routine
		5	Limited range of specialization
3	Blended learning system	10	Peer group learning
		11	Self-paced learning
		12	Teacher as moderator
		13	Real-life problem analysis
		14	Contextual and choice-based learning

Conclusion

The study revealed three factor categories of management education programme delivery in India in line with literature review. Adoption of e-learning technologies is always a complicated process. Based on the perceptions of the learners and providers, these factors were carefully evaluated. One important observation has been made by the researcher that besides two generic factors of WBIS and traditional system of learning, the study has provided another mode of learning that is, blended form of learning through the extraction of third factor. Blended learning draws the important components of both paradigm and develops into an independent form of learning perhaps required in management education. More importantly, the model takes a cue from two important theories of higher education that is, constructivist and media richness theory. Theory of constructivism identifies with learner’s ability to construct knowledge from different sources like own creativity, through information dissemination peer group or from managed learning environment (Jonassen, 1991). The second theory advocates that electronic media can provide same richness in communication like that of a face-to-face meeting thus effectively bridge the geographic barrier (Daft and Lengel, 1986). Therefore, blended model not only fosters self-paced learning but also the honours maturity learners by admitting knowledge construction and sharing over a network.

One of the objectives behind this study was to identify the gaps in system of management education prevailing in majority institutions in India and to find a solution to bridge that gap. Respondents retorted that present pedagogy is unable to fulfil the learning requirements resulting low satisfaction level among the corporate. Singh (2003) has defined blended learning as ‘…various event-based activities, including face-to-face classrooms, live e-learning, and self-paced learning. This often is a mix of traditional instructor-led training, synchronous online conferencing or training, asynchronous self-paced study’. The genesis and efficacy of blended learning becomes clear when Singh (2003) says, ‘a single mode of instructional delivery may not provide sufficient choices, engagement, social contact, relevance, and context needed to facilitate successful learning and performance’. Therefore, it becomes evident that due to the limitations of traditional and e-learning format ranging from infrastructure, psychological bottleneck to limited teacher–student interaction the success of management education could not be reaped (Mukhopadhyay, 2011). Hence, a mixture of components drawn from both learning systems were required to realize the actual essence of management education resulting in higher learning gain. The observation has been supported by Smith (1999) with the statement: ‘With an increasingly diverse range of pedagogical methods being employed by academics, little that students have previously learned in traditional classrooms has prepared them for the era of online learning’. With the growing demand of mentoring at postgraduate level, the teachers are expected to come out of traditional school and become moderators while the students grow in knowledge (Segrave and Holt, 2003). Further, this study extends Sharma’s (2007) 3D model of pedagogy in management education to a more intuitive technology-mediated blended learning model. The 3D model consists of three basic pedagogic dimensions that is, dialogue, discussion and discourse which is primarily premised over traditional setting. However, technology mediation adds flexibility to this model resulting into an advanced model consisting of e-learning components that is, 3E model with dimensions of easy delivery, enriched content and experiential learning. From 3E model, the final model of blended learning has been derived and on the basis of variables gathered under this factor the model is named as 3DE model of blended learning consisting of three dimensions of contextual learning, choice-based learning and networked learning (Mukherjee, 2012). Figure 2 illustrates the evolution of 3DE blended learning model where use of technology tools as part of programme delivery has played a pivotal role in transforming the overall teaching and learning experience from the perspective of both learner and provider.

Figure 2.

Evolution of 3DE Blended Learning Model (Adapted from Mukhopadhyay, 2011)

The study extends the understanding of pedagogic issues in management education and subsequent usage of technology. There are few limitations in the study, that is, the sample size and the model are based on empirical observations.

Footnotes

Notes

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