The Web as an OB Learning Medium

A central, almost implicit prerequisite for organized learning is a communication medium, whereby an instructor can interact with one or more students. Historically there has been one primary communication medium, and that has been face to face in a classroom: instructor and students gather and transact, using audio and visual means. As social animals, humans have evolved so as to enhance their capacity to interact in an face-to-face medium; e.g., through use of verbal and body language.

We have been able to employ alternative media for distance communication for millenia, perhaps beginning with smoke signals, messenger, and semaphor. In recent history we have made revolutionary advances in our ability to communicate at a distance; e.g., via telegraph, radio, television, and phone. In the late '80s, the worldwide web emerged as an increasingly viable communication medium. Currently the web offers a medium whereby individuals can interact with others via two means: (1) conferencing, where individuals send typed messages to a central site where they can be read by others, and (2) chat, where individuals join a chat site at a given time, and type messages which can be immediately read and responded to by others (footnote 1).

Currently, considerable experimentation is going on with the use of the web as an alternative to the classroom medium for post-secondary learning. Initial results suggest that it is possible to create an acceptable university course in which most or all transactions occur via web media, as oppose to a classroom. Still, there is room for doubt. New adopters can be expected to be enthusiastic about the results of their effort, and the students participating in these courses are by no means a representative sample. To what extent might support of web-based courses be driven by hopes of cost economies or trendiness? Can the quality of a web-based course match that of a classroom course?

The purpose of this article is to explore the effectiveness of the current online medium as a learning environment, as compared to the current classroom standard. I will first compare the attributes of the two media, and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of both. I will then consider the learning niche which each can most appropriately occupy.

Engagement in a learning medium incurs costs, both by the provider of the medium and by those engaging in it. Some of the major costs of each medium are discussed below.

Startup costs are incurred when time and effort is spent in teaching students and faculty to utilize a learning environment effectively. University classroom courses have low startup costs, since incoming students have already spent years in a classroom learning environment, and are selected, in part, in their ability to do well in it. For instructors too, startup costs have historically been low, since post-secondary instructors typically receive little training in classroom teaching.

The online learning environment, on the other hand, currently requires considerable startup costs, both by instructors and by students. While the technological hurdle required by instructors is steadily lowering, the instructor must not only know how to operate a computer, but must also gain a basic mastery of online web editing, chat, email, conferencing, and other software associated with an online course. He/she must then use this to design a course--all this before a single student is taught.

Many online courses require less extensive technological mastery by students--say the ability to use a web browser. Still, the student may be asked to conduct web searches, and to learn to use conferencing and chat functions via the browser. Used to f2f interactions, students must adapt to the narrower medium of the web. Moreover, students are typically responsible for setting up and making their own systems work. Many would-be online students drop out, having underestimated the amount of time and effort the requisite technological mastery and maintenance problem-solving required.

As online software becomes easier to use, online offerings become established and the "computer generation" becomes of college age, we can expect that the startup costs of online courses will fall to levels more on a par with those of classrooms. Still, in a resource-scarce institution, startup costs can threaten to exceed the ability of the institution to pay them.

The major cost of a classroom course is the cost of the instructor, especially if the instructor is on a tenure track. The cost of the classroom itself for a single course is quite small: whereas the cost of the instructor may be $6,000 or more, the cost of the classroom, with utilities, maintenance, and teaching materials, is typically under $100. For an online course, if one ignores the cost of technical training, one need only provide the instructor with a suitable web-connected computer and access to a server--items which faculty typically will have in any event. On the face of it, then, the institution, by not having to provide a classroom, can save a small amount for each section offered. Of course, if the institution thereby under-utilizes its classrooms, it is not really saving anything. On the other hand, a shortage of classroom space might be ameliorated by offering more online courses instead of funding a new building.

An early image of web-based learning was that it would remove the constraints of classrooms, and thereby allow instructors to teach classes of unlimited size. As with f2f courses, it is possible to envisage large class learning modalities, involving automated registration, audiovisual packages for student purchase, computer-based learning activities, and objective exams (proctored in computer labs near students). Such a design could find a place in universities where large classes are taught, and represent a viable alternative to large f2f classes. Since, as seen above, the major expense in a course is the instructor, this seems an attractive way to reduce the per-student cost of a course.

Most university courses, however, do include a certain amount of student-instructor interaction in their design, and this interaction is considered essential to effective learning; e.g., for the purpose of student guidance, feedback on student activities, and certification of student learning. It is possible to extend class size while maintaining a critical level of interaction through student assistants, computer support systems and the like, but beyond a certain point, this interaction is not possible, and the pretense of a college-level course cannot be maintained.

Moreover, online instructors currently are required to work harder than their classroom counterparts, because they must not only prepare and implement a course learning design, but also manage the technology supporting the course. Thus, current online courses tend to top out at around 25--even when a classroom equivalent might be taught in sizes of 50 or more.

On the other hand, online courses can be economical when a university is providing a course to a variety of people at different times in different places. Since unversities are often committed to providing such courses, they are often required to hold them, even when the class is very small, say 2-5 people. Since an online course is "any time, any place", a number of small sections offered at different times and places can be combined into a single, larger, online section.

F2f learning does extract a cost from students, in the requirement that the student regularly be at a certain place at a certain time. The student must find his/her way to the place, possibly requiring a long commute. If driving by car, he/she must then pay additional parking fees. The necessity of an inflexible schedule in the service of convening a class is a significantly larger cost for the non-traditional student, who must also maintain a work life which may in itself require travel and absences.We assume that the expenses and problems caused by this requirement are borne by the student. For example, if the student's car breaks down, we do not expect the student to call the instructor for help.

An online course also extracts a cost, in that the student must have access to an internet-enabled computer. Though an online course will eliminate some driving expenses, students are likely to be taking classroom courses as well. Thus it will be seen by some students as an additonal educational expense.While the cost of computers is falling to historic lows, even a few hundred dollars may be seen as a significant expenditure to students already straining to bear the other associated costs of higher education.

Risk here means the possibility that the learning environment will fail, causing a disruption in learning. Classrooms do fail, when power goes out and it is night or one is in a windowless room. One could conceivably move to a voice discussion, but more typically the class is adjourned. In our institution, this happens 1-2 times per semester. A fire alarm, though rarer, could have the same effect. This is a serious problem in a classroom environment because of the difficulty of convening a class at another time to make up the lost class time.

There is a far greater likelyhood of temporary failures in the online medium. The online medium rests on a chain of technologies including fiber optic lines, connector boxes, web communication protocols, transactions with domain name servers, phone lines, and home computers. If any of these fail or are not configured correctly, the learning environment is not there. In my experience, system failures (where all students were affected) occured four times last semester, and some persisted for several hours. In addition, students experience failures due to problems with their computers, software, connections, and internet service providers. There were about 20 problems of this type which students experienced last semester. Though online technology is steadily getting more reliable, one can expect that lapses will continue to occur--at least in the near future.

Unlike the classroom, however, online lapses of this type are more a nuisance than a disruption. Because the learning process is "any time, any place", students merely need to get online later when the problem is fixed in order to resume the learning process.

Table 1: Comparison of class and web economics
Comparison	Class	Web
Startup costs (students and faculty)	low	high, declining
Fixed costs to system	low: classroom is inexpensive	low: web & faculty computers already there
Cost per student to system	low in large classes	moderate: currently smaller class sizes
Costs to students (besides tuition, books)	low	moderate: requires web computer
Risk of media failure	low, but failures are critical	moderate, but failures are forgiving

This table suggests that, contrary to a popular notion, online learning is not intrinsically less expensive to offer than classes. Though startup and technology costs presently add to the cost of online learning, their importance can be expected to diminish as instructors and students get used to the online environment, computer prices fall, and web-enabled computers become seen as on a par with TVs and cars as a part of the normal household. The economics of online learning seem least attractive where large numbers of classroom sections are offered locally, and most attractive in large classes or when large numbers of smaller size sections are offered at different places and times.

A drop of ink into water creates a complex vortex pattern; a drop into alcohol creates an equally complicated, but different pattern. Similarly, the face-to-face and online medium can create differences in the pattern of interaction among a set of individuals. Some of the known differences are discussed below.

Perhaps the most obvious difference between classroom and online is the comparative "narrowness" of the online medium. Whereas the classroom provides verbal, non-verbal, and visual/written channels of communication, the online medium currently provides communication via typed messages, along with static visuals. This quality stems from the current limits of the online rate of information flow. In terms of interaction, what is lost is the non-verbal aspects of communication: we can neither see nor hear others with whom we are in communication.

Online instructors may attempt to compensate for this loss by encouraging students to use "emoticons", or textual representations of feelings; e.g., ":-)" is a sideward representation of a smile, whereas ">-(" represents a frown, or disapproval. In my experience, some students do learn and use these symbols. Still, online students seem more prone to misinterpretation of statements delivered without supporting nonverbals.

Whereas the presence of a student in a classroom is apparent to all, an online student may not be visible until he/she speaks. For this reason, most chat programs will register the entry of an individual into a chat room, allowing others to address a person who has not yet spoken.

The virtual student can much more anonymous than the student in the classroom. He/she need not dress for the classroom, and could have a cold or a hangover, without anyone noticing. For some students this seems to be emboldening, and many online instructors report better participation than they would expect in a classroom. This may be due in part to the smaller class size, whereas it's hard in a large classroom to avoid the silent back row gang.

I've seen and heard of numerous instances of "online shyness": a retiscence on the part of some students to construct and actually send a message for viewing by others. My sense at this point is that many people who are fear self-disclosure in class fear the same thing online. This, however, is not a general rule. There do seem to be individuals for whom the oral presentation of the classroom is their key block. These individuals may have a lot to say, and will say it in an online environment. Moreover, some foreign students who lack fluency in the language of the classroom have been able to communicate much more effectively via the keyboard/chat medium than they could via classroom speech.

Classroom communication occurs largely through oral communication. The web equivalent is chat, which is presently conducted via keyboard entries. Since keyboarding is slower than speech, then, the rate of communication in a web environment is somewhat slower than that in classroom. This is not without disadvantages: students can read or review what a person said, have more time to think, and are aware that what they enter is less ephemeral than the spoken word. All these factors combine to lead to more thoughtful entries.

Still, this can be a problem when a learning design involves a lot of communication. For instance, a group may need to carry out team-building activities and collectively go through several decision steps. It's important for an online instructor to build in enough "space" for a group to carry out this activity. It may be necessary to reduce the amount of communication required by structuring or simplifying the assignment, and/or to train the group in efficient communication; e.g., via focused discussions, agendas, and appointment of meeting leaders.

Though, as pointed out above, a slower online medium can be problemmatic for online teams, the medium does provide some advantages for teams. Scholtes (1992, 6-36) lists ten common problems which teams encounter. At least three of these are less a problem in online teams: (1) "overbearing participants" are less a problem because these individuals cannot use nonverbal messages to assert themselves; (2) "dominating participants" are not able to control "air time" because their entries cannot block the entries of others, and; (3) "reluctant participants" find fewer barriers to contribution.

I expect that in the near future, live audio chat, now technically possible, will become feasible. In addition, live, or near-live video should become feasible not longer after that. At that point, live audio-video chat should rival videoconferencing in effectiveness, but at a fraction of the cost.

Whereas a library is a part of every university campus, remote participants of online learning will not necessarily be near a library. They will, however, have access to web resources. It's standard practice for online instructors to include links to relevant resources. For students in business, these resources can be considerable: every major domestic and foreign organization has an up-to-date web page which includes useful information about it. There are web pages for most disciplines which also provide useful resources. Sites such as http://crayon.net/ provide easy access to a wide variety of news services. Web search facilities such as http://altavista.digital.com allow powerful searches through the vast sea of web sites. The web seems made to order for student projects.

By the same token, the web is a less effective representative of the world of ideas. It's now easy to find and order books, e.g., via http://amazon.com and http://www.barnesandnoble.com . Some libraries offer search facilities, and can even return the text of some articles. Still, the bulk of written material found in libraries cannot be accessed online. Materials can be located via online search, but this must be followed by a trip to the libary itself.

In some courses there can be a relationship between the learning medium and the learning content. Communication courses use the classroom medium as a practice arena for written and verbal communication. A course on diversity can use diversity in the classroom to explore the topic. A course on teams can be taught in teams. The experiential stream in organization behavior has led to many activities in which the classroom medium is shaped to reflect O.B. concepts and dynamics, or "the classroom as organization."

If the learning goals of a course address face-to-face skills, then a classroom would seem to provide an appropriate medium for learning and practicing these skills--just as an online medium would seem to represent an appropriate medium for learning and practicing online communication and group skills. Still, others have argued that the classroom is not necessarily a good representation of a business context. Though the coincidence of medium and learning focus provides the opportunity for practice activities, this opportunity is not neccessarily grasped. Instructors may not be versed in or confident in using classroom medium for practice purposes. Moreover, simulations and practice activities are usually time-consuming, and instructors may choose other learning activities (such as cognitive study) which are seen as having higher priority. If so, the course's goals may be just as well served in another medium.

The classroom setting provides a fair amount of structure for the learner. By registering for a course, he/she commits not only to a set of learning goals and activities, but also to carrying out many of them in specific places and times. Many classroom instructors regard it as a part of their role to "motivate" students to carry out learning activities.

The online environment is, by its nature, less structured. Though an online course can be just as specific in its learning goals and activities, the student has much more flexibility in the "where and when" of carrying them out. Though this asynchronous quality of online learning is a highly attractive feature to some learners, it also requires a fair amount of discipline: a person with a full life can be tempted to put off learning activities, to the point where they don't get done well or at all. Whereas a "no show" in class is noticed, it's easier to not show when there is no specific time that showing is required.

In addition, the online learner is also responsible for creating and maintaining his/her end of a highly technological and not entirely reliable communication channel. This can require some determined problem-solving in areas which the learner has little expertise.

Partially for these reasons, the dropout rate in online courses tends to be higher than that of classroom courses. A dual process appears to be at work here: online learners are put into a situation where self-management is important. Those either good at self-management or good at learning to manage their learning are likely to stay, others are more likely to drop or default.

A classroom can include a diversity of participants, depending on the diversity of the population local to the class. An online course, however, has a greater potential for diversity. It is not uncommon for online courses to attract participants from other parts of the world. In addition, as pointed out earlier, it can make it easier for participants with low verbal fluency to participate. Finally, the web makes it easy to access materials from all parts of the world. For a course with international goals, an online medium offers significant advantages not available to the classroom.

Since the early 1980's, there has been an ongoing stream of interest in the use of computers in management and organizational behavior education. Many computer programs, such as management training software, interactive cases, personal assessment instruments, management expert systems, interpersonal simulations, team decision support systems, and group diagnostics software have been developed (Vance, 1993, ch. 10). Yet such programs have yet to receive wide acceptance in the classroom.

Why not? One possibility is that computers don't have much promise in education. Yet at least some of these programs reflect improvements in activities which are already being conducted in the classroom; e.g., use of instruments for self-assessment. When this is done via computer program, it is possible to vastly increase the ease and extent of feedback provided, for example by comparing student scores to others in the class or national populations.

A more likely reason for low acceptance is that universities and university educators still must pay a large startup cost to make these programs available to all the students in a class. Typically it involves the instructor finding, obtaining, learning about, and having the program installed in a local lab, introducing students to the program, and assigning the computer activity.

These startup costs have already been incurred in an online classroom, so the addition of computer-assisted learning devices is a much easier step. Online students are likely to benefit most immediately from improved and timely access to course feedback. Computerized exams are relatively easy to implement, and personal assessment instruments with immediate feedback are also relatively easy to implement--once permission issues have been resolved. Other types of computer-assisted learning should follow, as the base of web students increases and existing programs are adopted to a web interface.

Table 2: Comparison of class and web effects on interaction
Comparison	Class	Web
Media richness	broad	narrow
Student presence	some shyness	less shyness
Communication rate	high	slower
Team processes	vulnerable to process losses	less so
Access to learning resources	library search, materials	web, library search
When the medium is the learning focus	opportunity for face-to-face interaction practice	opportunity for virtual interaction practice
Self-managed learning	more structured	less structured
Diversity	higher	lower
Interfacing with computer-assisted learning	easier	harder

In comparing class vs. web effects on interaction, there is no clear benefit to using one or the other. The effects are complex, either equivalent, or favoring one in one kind of situation, the other in another. One the one extreme, a senior research seminar would seem to be clearly best held in a classroom setting. On the other, a course studying international topics, with a wide diversity of students, and using computer-assisted learning activities would seem to favor an online learning environment.

Any learning activity takes place in the context of interaction. Most instructors have longstanding experience in developing learning activities for a classroom medium, both as a student and as an instructor. In general, moving to an online medium will impact activities in three ways: (1) some activities will become less viable, (2) some activities will be largely unchanged, and (3) some activities, less viable in the classroom, will become more viable. Activities in each of these three activities are discussed below.

Class-level interactions. In general, class-level activities such as impromptu discussions, case discussions, become less viable. This is not because of technological or bandwidth barriers. It's possible with current software and web bandwidths to conduct class discussions via Listservs, (a method of sharing E-mail), with conferencing software, and with chat. Ichat has established a special classsroom mode, where an instructor can send messages and show pictures, and students can only ask questions of the instructor. Other corporations are working on online classroom equivalents, where students can see and hear the instructor and one another.

Yet online class activities are presently less viable for two reasons. First, class-level activities tend to be media-intensive, typically with a discussion leader scanning for nonverbal information from the class, impromptu discussion, and audiovisuals. Though many online classes will include an asynchronous discussion, the current text-based interaction loses the dynamic quality of a live, classroom discussion. Second, many online students value highly the asynchronous quality of online courses. They like having a course which will accomodate to their schedule. An online discussion, by requiring all students to be online at a given time, compromises this asynchronous quality. To be fair, it's possible to think of some benefits which might be obtained by paying this price; e.g., development of a continuously offered, "streaming" course, as contrasted to the "batch" mode characteristic of traditional classroom models.

Media-specific activities. Sometimes learning goals relate to the medium of interaction. For example, if an instructor is teaching oral communication, he/she may have students give presentations in class. This option is not available if one wants to teach oral communication in an online class. Similarly, some communication skills involve developing sensistivity to media cues such as body language, facial expressions, and intonation and timing of verbal delivery, and using these to enhance communication. Again, the option of using the classroom medium to further learning is not available in an online course. It is possible, of course, to develop alternative activities, such as out-of-class application assignments, or local student group activities, but these options are equally available to classroom courses.

Lectures. Though lectures seem to be getting bad press lately, they can serve useful functions; e.g., in presenting late-breaking information, in carrying out some learning steps, and in leading up to discussion. If a lecture is conducted as an information presentation activity, it can be replaced with a textual lecture, to be read by the student at a time of his/her choosing. Audio streaming technology, where an audio-only lecture is made into a web file, and students can listen to the lecture while it is downloading to the student's site, is presently viable. MPEG streaming technology, where a video of the same is downloaded, stretches current bandwidth, but should be viable within the next 2-4 years as web bandwidth increases. Students benefit by being able to listen at a time of their choosing and, if needed, re-listening. While instructors lose the opportunity to scan students for signs of understanding, it is possible in an online course to follow up each lecture with a discussion.

Readings. Courses typically are accompanied with reading materials, assigned throughout the course. Some online instructors have set out for themselves the task of creating an online course, obviating the need for accompanying materials. I do not believe, however, that instructor-created online texts are the wave of the future. Current popular online practice is to designate required materials, and for the continuing education arm of the university to develop a means of delivering these to students. Online instructors often develop a renewed appreciation for the efficacy of text materials: they communicate a vast amount of audio-visual information, they can be used without accompanying technology, are highly portable, and relatively invulnerable to technology failure.

"Papers". It is a quite common practice to assign projects to individuals or groups with the the primary output being a document, created by the individual/group, rendered on paper. These are then delivered to the instructor, either in class, or dropped off at the instructor's office. Particularly since most of these written documents were developed as computer word processing files, it is easy in an online environment to electronically send the document to the instructor, via e-mail/attachment or via the web medium. Feedback is in turn sent back to students as comments in the paper body or as a separate commentary, in the form of a returning e-mail or as a web document available only to the sponsoring person/group. Since students tend to be highly concerned about getting "point-counting" outputs submitted on time, it's essential to have a feedback mechanism to reassure students/groups that their submissions have, in fact been received.

Online instructors may realize how adapted the double-spaced, typewritten document is to assessment and feedback. It's not quickly apparent how one processes a folder of electronic documents as efficiently as a stack of papers. Many students will want to submit documents in a format which they are familiar with. If an instructor allows this, he/she will spend a lot of time decoding, translating documents, and interacting with students when the file didn't come through. The instructor should determin a submission format which is reliable and efficiently processed, and require this of everyone. When assessing documents, some instructors wind up printing out the documents and marking up the papers in the old way. I've tended to developing feedback forms, which I fill out as I read the document. More recently, I've developed a paperless process, with the document received into a Microsoft Access cell. I have a feedback form in another cell, and the score in another. The whole process is electronic, the results available to students as soon as I finish.

Individual Interactional Activities. While interactional activities inevitable are carried out through the available medium, they may not rely on the specific qualities of a particular medium. What a person is learning to actually do in some skill areas does not seem to rest very heavily on medium actions. Whereas oral skills do ultimately require action in a face-to-face medium, motivational skills seem to focus more on the ability to develop a motivational plan. "Self-awareness", a common OB topic, has to do more with a personal self-understanding, with little implication of a media action, save for demonstrating learning. Similarly for stress- and time-management. The skill topics of conflict resolution, negotiation, and delegation all have to do with conducting competent interactions with others. While a face-to-face medium can be used to develop interactional learning in these areas, present skill learning activities tend to focus on effective interaction, with little mention of media-specific dynamics. "Interpersonal" skills, then, can be argued to be less face-to-face skills, and more "interactional" skills, which can be addressed in any interactional medium.

Group/team activities. Because of the newness of the online medium, not a lot of thought has been given to the difference between online and face-to-face team skills. My sense is that a lot of team skills, such as decision-making, developing a mission, developing team ground rules, and creative problem-solving are less medium-specific, and more broadly important to developing effective teams, regardless of the team's interaction medium.

As seen in the earlier discussion, there are both benefits and disadvantages to moving from face-to-face teams to online teams. Disadvantages include a narrower, slower interaction, and technological startup costs. Advantages include fewer process losses, possibility of computer "groupware" support, more thoughtful discussion, and more contribution from students who are shy or have low language skills. Since theses are significant pros and cons, this middle classification seems the best place for this activity. The implication is, that in considering whether to place a course involving groups online, the instructor should consider carefully the specific nature of the groups he/she wishes to engender.

Experiential Exercises. OB teachers using an experiential approach may use a number of exercises where dynamics are created for learning purposes. Many of these exercises involve physical materials, such as information in envelopes, cardboard shapes, play money, tinkertoys, etc. Though the exercises are generally not designed to develop skills in manipulating these materials, these exercises have been designed to be expressed in a face-to-face medium. Translation to an online requirement would require rethinking the essential purpose of these exercises, then developing online equivalents of the materials; e.g., envelope icons which can be opened by double-clicking, drag-and-drop Leggos, etc. To make this happen in an onine environment will require a large startup cost, but could be done. Once done, the online instructor may notice some advantages in that there are no material costs, and materials don't wear out or get lost.

Personal Instrument Activities. Many OB texts include personal instruments; e.g., Myers-Briggs, Quinn's Managerial Orienation, or Kouzes & Pozner's Leadership Style Inventory. These are useful not only for developing self-awareness and as a basis for personal a learning agenda, but also as lead-ins to particular areas and when surfacing personal theories. These can be done in the classroom as paper-and-pencil activities, but doing them via computer offers far greater opportunities for processing score data and presenting comparison data--and doing this quickly and without a great deal of instructor effort.

Media-Specific Activities. Just as some target learning in the classroom may have to do with the medium of the classroom, so can an online class take advantage of the online medium to reinforce related learning objectives. For example, using the online medium for communication requires its own "netiquette". The phenomenon of "flaming" is unique to online interaction, but techniques have been developed for reducing its incidence; e.g., using emoticons, and active listening techniques.

Many corporations are finding that online, or "virtual" teams are often a preferable alternative to face-to-face teams, and value employees who are skilled in making these teams work. As suggested earlier, some virtual team skills are simply team skills placed in a broader context. Other ancillary skills, however, are more media-specific; e.g., keyboarding, getting online, computer use, establishing alternative communication back-ups, and establishing efficient communication processes. Just as face-to-face skills are more plausibly taught in a classroom medium, so does it make sense to teach these skills online. The exception would be basic skills required to learn online. Learning these requires a transitional medium, such as a computer classroom.

Computer-Assisted Learning. As discussed earlier, there exists a wide variety of Computer-Assisted Learning software which can be applied to web learning. While most classroom courses cannot assume that all students can access requisite computer hardware/software, this is far less an issue in an online class. Such software is especially attractive in that, as with textbooks, once it is developed, any number of students can use it.

Table 3: Viability of Class Activities in an Online Medium
Less viable	Equally viable	More viable
Class-level interaction Media-specific interaction	Lecture Readings "Paper" assignments Individual interactional activities Group/team activities Experiential activities	Personal Instruments Media-specific interaction Computer-Assisted Learning

A key point made here is that for many activities, medium supports interaction but is not intrinsic to it. This means that while many activities are expressed in a particulular medium, they can be re-expressed in another medium without losing the activity. If asynchronicity is an express quality of an online class, class-level interactions will be less viable when moving to online. We see that many activities associated with the classroom can be moved without major modification to an online medium. Additionally, we see that in those instances when information processing is a part of the activity, moving to an online medium can increase viability.

This article inquires into the adequacy of online media as a basis for learning activities of the type used in OB courses. The impact of medium on the economics of a course, on interactions, and on the kinds of activities which can be carried out were compared. Though this discussion contains a lot of specifics, two general points emerged. First, though some differences between classroom and online media were considered advantageous or disadvantageous (e.g., relative slowness of textual interaction or greater vulnerability of face-to-face teams to process losses), there was no clear indication that one medium was better than the other. The implication is that some types of courses will work better in classroom, others online. The question is how to tell the difference. Second, these comparisons suggest that, while many learning activities were designed to be expressed in a particular medium, their essential dynamics were not media-bound; that is, they could in principle be re-expressed in another medium without loss.

The discussion also provides a context in which the nature of OB itself can looked at in a different way. While OB has implicitly become associated with face-to-face interactional dynamics, much of OB addresses dynamics underlying media transactions. It, therefore contains the possibility of transcending the face-to-face medium, and becoming generalizeable to both classroom and online media. Will we, as OB teachers and researchers expand the OB concepts so as to be thought of in this way? To what extent will traditional OB teachers make the move to "colonize" the virtual interaction learning landscape--or will this be done by computer departments? OB teachers seem to have been slow to consider the implications of the web explosion for their discipline. This article suggests that, ultimately the emergence of online media will be seen as a revolutionary event in the evolution of organizational behavior teaching.

Vance, Charles M. "Mastering Management Education: Innovations in Teaching Effectiveness." Newbury Park: Sage Publications.

1. Other media are also becoming available on the web; e.g., streaming audio and video, and live audio and video in transactions. Though these are currently technologically available, the web bandwidth available to most people is insufficient to support use of these media. We can, however, expect these to become increasingly viable in the next few years, as the bandwidth available to web users increases.

The Web as an OB Learning Medium: How Does it Compare to the Classroom?

The Web as an OB Learning Medium:
How Does it Compare to the Classroom?