3/13/97

Editors, News Directors: To arrange an interview or photograph MBA candidates on the Athens campus March 16-23, contact Dwight Woodward, 614/593-1886.

ATHENS, Ohio -- Twenty-nine executives from five states arrive on campus Sunday (March 16) to launch Ohio University's first online degree program, the College of Business MBA Without Boundaries.

Virtual office hours, collaborative software, e-mail and the Internet's World Wide Web are elements in the program, unique in Ohio and one of only a handful in the country, according to John Stinson, interim dean of the college.

"The idea evolved over a couple of years," Stinson said. "It allows executives to use cutting-edge technology and integrate their working experience into their learning experience."

After a week of orientation and course work, the MBA candidates return to their jobs, continuing to complete course work by computer from home. The two-year program is organized into nine units which focus on projects that elicit "desired learning outcomes" from students who work on teams with other students.

Using a Mac or PC computer, students access Domino software, the newest version of Lotus Notes, a "threaded discussion group database" on the WWW, that allows students to discuss projects with faculty and students on their team in an interactive conversation by computer, according to Stinson.

"Rather than memorizing from a textbook, students learn by working their way through projects, usually in a team," Stinson said. "As they need to know information, they engage in research, work with faculty and construct their learning in an active and contextualized way rather than being vessels that are simply filled by faculty."

Unlike other problem-based MBA programs that review problems from the past, students work on current problems reported in the news media, such as "Will Apple Computers survive?"

"There is no Harvard Case Study' of the day," Stinson said. "You have to present current, authentic problems that have some authenticity to them and engage the students to have the learning outcomes you want."

Making, selling and financing activities, accounting, strategy, global competition, industry analysis, improving operations, entrepreneurial activity and public policy are among the topics covered in the projects.

"The projects are designed to be meaningful to the students' companies," Stinson said. "It might be related to their job or it might not. But the end product must have value for them and their company so they can return to their company and make recommendations."

Over the next two years, students will return to campus for one-week residencies in the middle and at the end of the program, and spend three additional weekend residencies on campus to meet with professors and other students during the two-year program.

Stinson received more than 500 inquiries about the course and narrowed the applicants to 50 before accepting 29 students in the inaugural class. Students from Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Nebraska and Connecticut have enrolled in the program.

Bryant Austin, 39, director of product development and delivery for Pitney Bowes Management Services, Stamford, Conn., says he's looking forward to returning to campus in March to be in the MBA program. Austin began undergraduate work in the College of Communication, but left in 1980 to take a job with Xerox Corp. He finished his B.S. in communication as an external student in November.

"I wanted to go back and get an MBA and I looked at a number of other programs locally, but I travel 75 percent of the time and I couldn't fit them into my schedule," Austin said. "When I heard about this program, it seemed like the perfect opportunity."