Designing a Student-Centered Learning Experience

By Herbert Rau, Associate Professor of MKT

Many post-secondary courses seem to be designed to deliver course content in a predominant manner, whether it is lecture format or student discussion and debate.  The problem of course-content delivery is compounded by the constraints that are inherent in an online course.

Mass-customization, a concept familiar to the commercial sector, envisions a blending of the ideals of mass production integrated into a customer preference for “one-off” products and services.  The efficiency and effectiveness that are the hallmarks of mass production must be cost-effectively combined with the elegance and individuality of custom delivered products and services. 

The capstone course for the MBA in Economic Crime and Fraud Management was redesigned from a traditional structure, where the instructor unilaterally decides all elements of the course, to a structure that is guided by a principle that attempts to utilize the concept of mass-customization.  The course was learner-centered, giving students some choice about what they will learn, how they will learn it, and how they will demonstrate competency.  Specifically, students could select from a variety of pre-selected materials what they wanted to study for one-half of the course’s content.  (The remaining half was determined by the instructor.) 

This course design allowed for a broad and diverse appreciation of different focal areas of strategy, as well as the ability to explore in-depth a topic that might be of the greatest interest to the student.  This design required students to adopt a “Learning Community” perspective where each became an “expert” in the chosen topic and was able to share their learning with their classmates. 

Qualitative evidence gleaned from student posts suggested that allowing students to choose multiple paths and varied interests in this capstone course broadened their perspective and understanding.  The posts further indicate a deeper level of student learning, with respect to Bloom’s Taxonomy, and greater curiosity about the material.  Indirect evidence, gathered from a 28 item survey, likewise suggested that this learner-centered course design achieved the desired learning goals.

The evidence that a modified mass-customized course might improve student learning is preliminary.  The sample size used in this case study was small, and all the students were highly-motivated, adult graduate students.  Students also had the choice to take a “traditional path” in the course, where the instructor determined 100% of the content, and close to half did just that.  This is an area where further investigation is warranted and where good assessment can inform one’s pedagogy.