Using Innovative Tools to Teach Computer Application to Business Students - A Hawthorne Effect or Successful Implementation Here to Stay

Abstract

A year after the primary study that tested the impact of introducing blended learning and guided discovery to help teach computer application to business students, this paper looks into the continued success of using guided discovery and blended learning with learning management system in and out of classrooms to enhance student learning. Particularly, it looks at the successful adaptation and implementation of learning management system as an aid to learning and delivery of a computer application subject to a class that is majorly populated by business students with little or no IT background. This paper tests the continued success to establish whether the success recorded after the first implementation was sustainable or merely influenced by the Hawthorn effect of trialing an innovation. It concludes with final grade measure over a one-year period of implementation of the system, and student responses that strongly support the original approach used by the author.