An Interview with Pauline Hagel
(“Inter” refers to the interviewer, “Hagel” refers to Pauline Hagel)
Inter:	Pauline I’m interested in the overall context for this particular interactive module, digital electronic module. The unit you that you teach is Strategic Management, what are the overall aims of that particular unit in a management major?
Hagel:	Well the unit is a compulsory third year unit and I guess the main aim is to integrate students’ knowledge of their management and general BCom studies, and is considered a capstone unit, which brings together a lot of their learning. It's focused on I guess, on senior management decision making in organisations, so the unit encourages students to take that perspective and also get used to taking the role of the decision maker, being responsible for the strategic direction and success of the organisation. So that’s what the unit is trying to achieve in terms of content, in terms of specific skills we're trying to achieve, including problem solving, critical analyses, critical thinking, report writing, formal business report writing, group collaborative work and so on.
Inter:	Now obviously this particular exercise reflects certain commitments you have to effective teaching and learning. But let’s step back a bit from the exercise to begin with, how do you actually conceive effective teaching and learning in a discipline like management and in a unit like Strategic Management?
Hagel:	I think effective, well effective teaching, for me in the unit is to provide students with opportunities to learn basic concepts, basic frameworks that they can use in their future careers as well as being able to guiding them towards a position where they can reflect on what they’re learning on the limitations of these frameworks as well as guide them towards them to being able to critically assess more broadly the whole strategic management field of study. To do that I think I use a variety of strategies both as I said, ways of teaching core concepts, ways of getting them to engage in those in a really practical way, linking it with real cases, getting them to do lots of case analyses where they're put into the position of decision maker, providing lots of variety in terms of the teaching process so that I’m hopefully catering for lots of different students learning needs or learning styles. In terms of students learning I think they're forced to actually really engage because they're forced to engage in case studies they have to get active, that’s the way they learn. They learn by actually practising, making decisions, in a safe environment because of course they're not really let loose on real organisations.
Inter:	Now turning to this particular Financial Analysis for Strategist’s module which you have done online. Where did this come from, what was the sort of learning need or issue or problem or even opportunity that you were addressing in designing this type of interactive exercise online?
Hagel:	The learning need was that I have students who come into the unit, who don’t have much experience with financial analyses, they don’t, they only have to have done the sort of core BCom units and some of them are not very confident. Now the reason this is important is because senior decision makers in organisations have to be able to read financial data and make sense of it. It's one input into their decision making process, so most of the cases the students do actually have financial information in it and really there’s an assumption that they can understand it, but a lot of students can’t. In addition the unit is open to students in other faculties and I have quite a few from other faculties do the unit and they don’t necessarily have much in the line of accounting or finance background. So the idea was to produce a stand alone sort of module that was available to students who didn’t have confidence in reading financial information.
Inter:	Now Pauline I’m one of those students you're talking about and I’ve come to this particular module. Can you step me through the design of it and what I’m actually doing. I’m coming to a home page, there’s a Welcome, let’s start at the beginning.
Hagel:	Ah yes, well in designing it too, there was another motive and that was to trial some of the tools within DSO prior to it becoming mainstream technology, so this goes back to 2003. So it was deliberately set up to trial some of these and it includes using the learning module. Students first go into the learning module and they're told, they're given information about how to use the module. It’s just a welcome message, just one page. I try to keep it as simple as possible, just explaining it, how it was, what to expect and how it was set up. The second stage was to get students to do a what’s called a financial orientation quiz. Now the idea of that was to first of all trial the technology and see how it worked. But what I decided to use it for was to sensitize the students to what the content of the module was going to be. So it was a pre-test to see what they knew already and to also to teach them the context in which the case they do was going to take place. In fact what I did was transfer a lecture content into a test and this actually proved really valuable because in the past I used to lecture on this topic and students actually, and it's not a good way for students to learn. It’s not trying to teach them all these formulas and ratios without any sort of context and I thought this would be a better way of doing it. So the emphasis was on asking them questions to just really bring it to their attention that they needed to know these things, and then in the answers actually provide them with the information they needed. So the answers actually were reasonably detailed and providing them for advice about why these things were important. So it was simply in the form of a true/false test, it was easy to do, so I thought it would be appealing to students and also get some information across in another way. So that was stage two of the test.
Inter:	So I take it that this module is part of an overall DSO site for the unit. Is there an assumption that you tell students, look if in doubt about your financial knowledge and analytical skill, please visit this module right at the beginning of semester.
Hagel:	That’s very true, that’s exactly the way I do use it, I try to reassure students who don’t feel confident in that first lecture that there’ll be ways that they can build their skills in financial analyses and they're alerted to the fact that it exists, and then at various points when where doing cases with financial information, I remind them that facility is there for them to go and look at. I have found that students are using it regardless of whether they or at least they are doing the first test to see if they need to do it.
Inter:	Now Pauline I’ve done the pre-test and I haven’t done very well, I think I need some help. I think I need to move onto the next step, where do we go from here.
Hagel:	The next step I decided was to provide them with an opportunity to go to a freely available resource on the web which had specialist courses in various parts of, various topics in financial analyses. Now this was really to make available to students who were interested, or even alert students who were interested, to what kind of resources there were. And I know for example some students have gone and looked at things on topics on mergers and acquisitions that have nothing to do with our course. But it was really just to alert them that there was a resource here, I explain to students that they can either do the module 1 here, course 1 or they could go to their textbook and there’s a chapter there and learn from their textbook, so either way was available to them. So my expectation was that students like you, that don’t feel confident would of at least gone and seen whether this was going to be a useful resource or they would simply be reassured that the textbook had enough information for them to cover what they needed to know in terms of our unit.
Inter:	Based on your experience of it and if I was in a category of feeling very unconfident would you expect me to go to the textbook, or maybe do quite a bit of browsing of these online resources. I mean what have students tended to do who really don’t feel confident at all in this area?
Hagel:	Well first of all I think I don’t know that I have any expectations about how individuals would respond because I think they would likely, I mean but I do think they are likely to do exactly as what you’ve said. Briefly browse to see what’s here and then probably go back to the textbook, in the hope that it might be an easier explanation. It’s really a matter of them looking at a case study that they have to do and working out what they need to know and then going to the resources that they might have available and going to the text to see perhaps a more simple definition so I think that’s how students are using it, but to be quite honest I don’t know that level of detail.
Inter:	Now I’m feeling more confident having been to the courses and the textbook and seeing the relevance of this in the context of the cases. What do I do from here to demonstrate my new found financial skills relating to strategic management?
Hagel:	Well the students are introduced then to a very short case study which is just a two page document, which is made up about a company and has some financial information. It’s just a Word document. The financial information in the case is then reproduced in an Excel spreadsheet, so that’s to make it easy for students to do some calculations. So they go into a Excel work space where, which is divided into different worksheets, they're given very detailed instructions that give them a useful process of analysis, it doesn’t mean that they have to follow this, but it’s for students who are less certain, it gives them a structured approach. And one reason for doing this is because, one of my beliefs about good teaching, to go back to our earlier topic is that modelling a good process of analysis is really useful for students. By modelling it they learn the process, it should become natural after awhile and it sets them up for the kind of skills they might need in the future. So this is a structured approach which tells them first of all what to expect in the module, what each task is, how to do it and they're told that they will be provided with formulas and definitions as they go, and then they're told what to do when they finish the Excel exercise.
Inter:	Now I’ve completed my ratio analysis of Widgeree Pty Ltd, I think I may have mastered these financial skills. What do I do with my work, what do I do with the worksheet I have completed?
Hagel:	Well can I just say first, that the students need to go to each worksheet and the idea is that they, we don’t want to focus on actually putting in formulas or them not knowing, doing the calculations, but rather on the information. So the worksheets have been made very simple where they simply copy across the formulas and then they’ve got the information that they actually need. So then having done their ratio analyses, we return to a test, basically then they’re asked to answer a number of short answers about the information that they have gained from the worksheet, and so really the emphasis in this assessment task is on interpretation, which is what our emphasis is in the course. So they’re asked questions which require them to interpret the information. The questions gradually got more complex, they were given the correct answer, and in some cases the correct answer there was quite a bit of detail of what the correct answer is, so that it’s teaching through giving them the answer. There were also links in there to additional readings, some electronic links through the answers to various sections of the course and to additional readings. So the testing facility was used really as just another learning device for the course.
Inter:	Now I’ve completed this test and I’m telling you in a lecture or tutorial, Pauline I’ve mastered this material, I got every question right, I can move on. Are you trusting my judgement or do you track students doing the test to find out how they’ve actually gone?
Hagel:	Yes, I have used the tracking device to see what’s actually happened, my main interest in the first instance was whether students were actually using it. In the two semesters really that it's run they’ve, it seems to be about 30% of the students are using it, they seem to be mainly using the testing facility, although I wouldn’t really know because if they’ve accessed the Excel, they could copy the formulas down and use it in their own way for other assignments. I haven’t actually looked at the results in terms final results of students in terms of how who have used this and the reason is because it really forms a small part of their final case study. It might be one question in the case study, so it’s actually rather hard to track. But what did intrigue me were that students were quoting back some of the things they had learnt from doing the module, like my answers I’d given in the testing in justifying a particular response on their final exam. So to me that was evidence that they were using it and understanding why they were put through the agony of doing this financial module.
Inter:	Stepping back a little bit Pauline and having adopted this approach for this particular area in strategic management. I mean, is there broader applicability to using spreadsheets and this type of educational approach in other areas of the unit or beyond the unit in other areas of management?
Hagel:	In some areas, perhaps in a unit like operations and quality management you might use spreadsheets and I think in fact in the redevelopment in some of our units, we are looking at opportunities to do so. In this unit no, no not really I’m not sure that I would use spreadsheets, they're very often very complex text based cases where I guess the information is really qualitative and using the tool is not necessarily the most appropriate, using Excel is not necessarily the most appropriate way for students to learn or experience the case. The other thing is I don’t want to place too much emphasis on the financial information because this is not a financial analysis unit and not only would I be encroaching on other areas, but more importantly students have to learn the proper place of financial data in this unit.
Inter:	You’ve experienced a number of generations of technology adoption and development at Deakin, you were very interested and developed a very neat case study, a web based case study, through a externally funded project, Southern Brakes and Plastic. I just wonder reflecting on the different generations of technology, what you’ve done with web based cases and this tool, what you do in DSO more generally point. What have you learnt over that period about what works well and what doesn’t, and what’s sustainable and what's not with digital and online teaching and learning?
Hagel:	I think it's very, very hard to replicate with technology the kind of rich experience you can have in a classroom. I’d say that in the first instance. One thing I have learnt perhaps is to try and keep it as simple as possible and that simple solutions can actually be really, really effective. I think I’m much more strategic now in deciding what is well done or what is most appropriate to do online and through the internet etc. I have also become a little bit cynical, I'm very aware that there are individual academics and teachers, who love to experiment, and there are people who are natural innovators and enjoy that, but whether it actually makes a big difference to students in the long run, I’m not so sure. Having said that, I’m actually really happy with this project because it really does serve a particular need, its not too ambitious. It's very simple and it sort of stands alone, it can run itself, it doesn’t need a lot of maintenance. So yes I suppose the thing I’ve really learnt is to be really careful and really strategic about how I spend my time and not get lost in the fun of innovating and losing sight of students and students’ needs and experiences.
Inter:	And finally talking about student needs and experiences, you’ve been actively involved in the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education and particularly the Learners and Learning unit. I wonder what advice you give to the academic staff at Deakin in terms of performing well in teaching. Maybe assuming that they’re quite new to university education, tertiary teaching but in the context of a place like Deakin what advice would you give somebody new who fitted that type of profile?
Hagel:	Well, I’d probably give them the same advice that I give myself all the time and that is to remind myself first off to really enjoy teaching and enjoy the process of teaching and telling myself how important and valuable it is. I think that recognising that it’s important and valuable really affects your mood and how you come across to students, and telling yourself that you enjoy it and love it, also affects the way you come across to students. So I consciously rev myself up to enjoy my teaching, whether it's online or its face to face and I think that I hope it comes across but I have found that that’s been really important. So that’s one thing, to see it as valuable and enjoyable. Another thing is I think is to do a lot of reflection, experimentation and reflection is really important, experiment with different ways of teaching. I could probably come back from every lecture and sit down and make some notes about what worked well, what didn’t, what I might do differently next time and part of that is just for efficiency sake when I pull out my lecture next year, I’ve made those notes and I know what I want to do. So reflecting on that is really important, I think in engaging with a dialogue with students about how they're going and how they're feeling is really important and sometimes you have to force yourself to do that. To really take time out, I go to the lecture early, I try to mingle outside, just go up to students and start chatting, I go into the lecture, I walk around, I just make contact because that makes me feel more comfortable too and helps me to get to know students. That’s more difficult doing that online, much more difficult, so I encourage students to ring me, chat to me and just to make contact. I think that this is a really hard thing when you're dealing with large classes, to really meet students, so I try to go out of my way to do that, and then that allows you because you have set up the dialogue, that allows you to get a sense of how students are feeling and then I think you need to put deliberately in place various stages during the semester points where you more formally try and assess the mood and the feeling and I’ve several strategies that I use for that. What else would I say, Oh the other thing is that, some advice that I would give would not be totally focused on the content that you want to deliver, although that’s understandable in the early stages with new academics, but to think as much about the process. How you're actually going to deliver it and I’ve actually found my teaching a lot more successful when I started to really spend almost as much time thinking about how will I get this across, not just what do I want to get across.
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