Organization of Distance Learning: Online Course “Supply Chain Finance”

Introduction

Distance learning, blended learning, and ‘flipping the classroom’ are all didactics that might be interesting to adapt to in an international learning environment. Staff exchange in higher education is one of the vehicles to provide more internationalization for students; in the past decades, there were a lot of initiatives to make education more international. Sometimes faculty moved abroad for a whole semester or just a term to give a short intensive course. The problem with such a face-to-face teaching mode is that it is quite expensive to organize, plus it has a lot of impact on the personal life of the lecturer (and his or her family).

This study aims to investigate the distance learning mode combined with ‘flipping the classroom’ and blended learning as an alternative to the face-to-face teaching mode. So, the study questions are:

• •

  What is the optimal mixture of didactical tools in the distance learning course Supply Chain Finance (SCF) for higher education to realize a maximum impact on the learning outcomes?

• •

  Is distance learning (including new didactical methods like ‘flipping the classroom’ and blended learning) an effective mode of delivering business education between academic partners?

This chapter has the following structure: background (learning pyramid, visible learning model, lean in the classroom, traditional teaching & learning versus ‘flipping the classroom’, distance learning, blended learning, constructive alignment, the taxonomy of Bloom, hybrid learning, the introduction of SCF, distance learning in an international educational environment), organization of distance learning course Supply Chain Finance, evaluation, findings, discussion, recommendations and future research directions, and conclusion.

The authors address the following audience: educators that are interested in developing a course of hybrid learning in higher, vocational, or secondary education, and educators at business schools that are interested in developing new modes of delivering their courses.

Background

Based on a track record of nearly two decades of collaboration between the faculty of economics of Chelyabinsk State University (CSU, Russia) and Arnhem Business School of the University of Applied Sciences Arnhem Nijmegen (HAN, the Netherlands), an initiative to organize an online course was taken and realized under the authority of the dean of the faculty economics of CSU. A senior lecturer/researcher of HAN, and two lecturers (one from CSU and one from HAN) were involved to deliver a semester distance learning course in the field of Supply Chain Finance.

This SCF pilot course was based on an existing course with a track record of 10 academic semesters, and two publications of the course instructor (Jansen, 2016a; Jansen, 2018).

The course was customized for students of CSU, so, they could learn a new subject (Supply Chain Finance) but also were exposed to new distance learning and assessment methods in a foreign language (English).

First, the authors give a relevant overview of didactics in general, the didactics for teaching economic subjects, and the didactics for distance learning. Second, the organization of the course is described with an emphasis on its structure and didactical approaches. Third, students' evaluation is analyzed to understand outcomes and give recommendations on possible ways of organizing distance learning courses.

The standard literature to train future teachers of economics is scarce, although one English textbook (Economics Network, 2020) and one Flemish textbook (De Witte & Schelfhout, 2015) are to be mentioned as sources of inspiration for the authors.

The overview of didactical approaches is based on state-of-the-art discussions in general didactics and didactics in teaching economics focusing on topics such as learning pyramid, visible learning, lean in the classroom, ‘flipping the classroom’, distance learning, blended learning, constructive alignment, revised taxonomy of Bloom and hybrid learning. The overview discussed in the following sections helps to understand what kind of didactical principles are the most suitable for organizing distance learning courses and are easy to implement.