Internationalisation is important to the university, and the School of Business is investing in it in many areas. In education, professors Sanna-Katriina Asikainen and Sanjit Sengupta are combining forces over the ocean in a new type of course entitled International Marketing of High Technology Products and Innovations. ACP (Adobe Connect Pro) was the technical platform for the course, but also some innovativeness and additional equipment were required.
Sanna-Katriina Asikainen says that Professor Sanjit Sengupta is an old acquaintance and a familiar lecturer in business administration:
Professor Sengupta has visited us more than ten times, and now we have decided to engage in closer cooperation in education. Based on this cooperation, we can offer students the opportunity to be taught by a top international expert. He has, for instance, co-written a textbook that we use in this course. In other words, we actually got to the source of the information. In addition, Sengupta lives in Palo Alto, close to San Francisco, which is a hub of high technology. This means that we will have access to fresh views.
Aiming for involvement and interaction
The course was planned to be conducted online to avoid travel and accommodation expenses. Professor Sengupta prefers to promote student involvement, which fits well with the teaching and learning strategy of the School of Business. Now, however, this approach had to be fully capitalised on in online education. Asikainen states:
We examined student feedback on ACP from last spring and realised that something must be done differently. Now we are aiming for an interactive classroom: students should feel that the lecturer is in the same classroom − voices should be audible and the movements and slides visible, as in a normal lecture. Correspondingly, the lecturer must see who is speaking and be able to respond to comments.
Innovation skills to good use
The basic ACP solution did not seem to be sufficiently flexible for the course. Asikainen says that also the large group size, approximately 80 students, set its own limitations to the implementation:
A group like that cannot fit into a video conference room. On the other hand, the AV equipment did not meet our needs regarding interaction. We had to come up with something. We included a wireless microphone, a wide angle camera and a wireless USB transmitter.
Consequently, we were able to compose a system that conveys the lecturer's voice from the speakers and image and slides from the television projector. As Sengupta poses questions to students, the wide angle camera provides a visual link to the lecture hall, and the students' voices are conveyed by wireless microphone to San Francisco.
Practical approach
In the current global culture, sales situations no longer necessarily require face-to-face meetings. Instead, business relations can be maintained e.g. through video conferences. Students have now had a chance to practice this in Asikainen’s and Sengupta’s course.
Students seem to value the advantages of technology:
"I value the lecture's interactive approach to learning, allowing us to experience high technology in real time through the use of video conferences. Exchanging experiences through discussions with professors and students from various disciplines and within an international context provides a good framework for studying. Without any doubt, it provides skills which are beneficial for my future career." Alexander Pees, Germany
Michael Moono: “To begin with, I must say that for a high-tech class I was pretty impressed that we had such sessions and experienced first hand what technology can do for us, that is, fully exploiting its benefits :)… Needless to say that you experience some minor glitches along the way like the lags, but it’s typical of any technology. However, the lessons, i.e. seminars, have been great especially given that we were and have been given the opportunity to interact with a great mind such as that of Professor Sanjit Sengupta all the way from California in real time. The bonus for me has been that he is the author of the literature we are studying. I guess it does not get any better than that if you ask me. The quality of the lessons has fulfilled and even exceeded my expectations! In addition, the Q&A sessions have been the icing on the cake for me as a business grad student at LUT :). Using ACP has also helped me critically analyse my own presentation skills – something I believe is and will be of benefit to me as a marketer.”