At a Glance
Institution:
Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT)
Instructor:
Sonja Johnston
Course Name:
Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management
Course Material in Use:
Balderson, Canadian Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management, 12e
Resource in Use:
Connect, SmartBook, & Application-Based Activities (ABAs)
Course Type:
Face-to-face, online synchronous, online asynchronous
Integration:
Sakai
Course Enrollment:
40 per section, 8 sections per year
Prior to adopting Connect in her Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management course, Professor Sonja Johnston was looking for a resource that provided students with effective homework and quizzes as well as allowing for auto-grading and integration with her Learning Management System (LMS). This would allow for instruction time to be focused more on coaching and supporting students for their applied projects rather than marking.
Students were already familiar with Connect in their foundations courses and the positive feedback they shared with Professor Johnston solidified her decision to adopt Connect in her own course. The research data and informed analytics presented to her and the ease of integration with her LMS were also a big draw for her.
“Many publishers create textbooks but finding supports for students and instructors that are effective, current, and engaging is a large challenge.”
Professor Johnston assigns a total of 60% of her course’s final marks to Connect content including SmartBook homework, Application-Based Activity mini-simulations, and quizzes/exams. The SmartBook homework is assigned prior to class so that students are prepared for in-class discussions, while the Application-Based Activities are assigned after lecture to reinforce student learning. All of these assignments sync seamlessly to her gradebook in D2L/Brightspace for automatic grading. This gives her more time to leverage her expertise in class, rather than spending it marking. It also gives students rewards for completing the work, immediate feedback, and additional support.
“Our institution does not have teaching assistants but Connect removes some of that burden, allowing me more time to focus on my students and they can show up with stronger attendance for synchronous sessions.”
Entrepreneurship is an inherently dynamic discipline that must be current and offer a strong user experience. From the moment of the first walkthrough, Professor Johnston found the McGraw Hill support incredible. She was provided with an operational demo that was so effective that she would later have it turned into the first section of her course, and she was amazed at how easy it was to navigate multiple tools for learning. She had walk-through files provided to give students the information they needed for first-day success and textbook acquisition. When she required the course to be reproduced into a colleague’s section, it was done quickly and seamlessly. Any inquiry she or her students had was dealt with promptly and professionally and she has found it a pleasure to work with her two dedicated representatives.
Professor Johnston implemented Connect the semester prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a relief to students that the course was already positioned to do everything necessary to support learning without having a significant impact on the course material. She has continued to leverage Connect in every semester since then, and student numbers are even increasing for this course. Nothing needed to be changed in how Connect was utilized as it had all been set up successfully prior to the pandemic.
“It was so easy to bring new instructors into the course and the supports from McGraw Hill to get them up to speed were fantastic. This made my role as a lead and instructor so much easier.”
Professor Johnston has found that the utilization of SmartBook homework assignments, quizzes, and mini-simulation activities builds students’ confidence, engagement, knowledge, and success in her course. Students now come to class with a stronger foundation of knowledge which has increased their capabilities as presented in their experiential learning projects in the latter part of the semester. Students are also attending class with the ability to pair their learning with an experiential project, demonstrating learning across the Bloom’s taxonomy objectives.using Connect and SmartBook assignments, Professor Mackintosh has found that students are more prepared for in-class quizzes and exams than prior to using Connect. In particular, she has found that the General Ledger questions are a great way for students to see how systems work in the real world. Not only are students more prepared, but class averages have increased due to the completion of on-line assignments and the instant feedback that comes with it.
When viewing her course analytics through Connect, she finds that students are consistent in developing regular cycles of logging in and creating positive work patterns. The average grades on the quizzes/exams are higher than before using Connect, and the quality of knowledge being brought into the experiential projects is stronger.
Her course also has a significant number of international and additional language students. The ability to have time for students to process language, concepts, and learning has increased student success and engagement. Based on the current course set up, students come better prepared for class discussions and show better ability to problem solve and identify opportunities when they explore their own business plan in the latter part of the course.
“When students run into technical issues, the technical support has been fantastic and accommodates the fact that we have students around the globe.”
Ultimately, Professor Johnston’s time and expertise are supported through Connect to be able to focus on her student-facing experiences and coaching. This allows students to have focused studying, success, and agency and has resulted in stronger student outcomes and a much more enjoyable teaching experience. Students also indicate in their course evaluations the effectiveness of the tools and resources used in this course and speak about their enjoyment of the user experience of Connect.
Sonja Johnston is an instructor at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), School of Business. She is the course lead for both Business Capstone and Entrepreneurship. She completed her Master of Business Administration from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Werklund School of Education (Learning Sciences), at the University of Calgary.
In addition to her decade of post-secondary instruction and coaching, she brings her experiences from business ownership and management consulting to her classroom. Her approach to entrepreneurship, and instruction in general), is that the most rewarding course experiences for students and instructors is to apply content in a coached, and experiential way. Creating a safer space to venture, fail, iterate, and learn allows for invaluable experience, growth, and understanding. The key to success is the strength of the knowledge foundation that permits experiences for applied learning.
“The amount of support and expertise offered by McGraw Hill was priceless. I wasn’t just pointed in the direction of the content and hoped for success through fumbling. The success and efficiency from the very beginning let me put my time and energy into the student-facing coaching.”
“The SmartBook is my favourite feature of Connect as it supports students to maneuver from review to the book content to read more deeply in areas they skimmed, missed, or were uncertain about. This builds confidence and retention, and students actively brought that knowledge back to our synchronous class sessions.”