Chatgpt: What Is It? How Does It Work? Can It Be A Teaching Tool For An Introductory Programming Course In Higher Education?, Dale Fontenot, Feroz Ahmed, Kaniz S. Chy

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Abstract:

ChatGPT is an interactive chatbot that uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand user input and generate responses. (Ruby, 2023) OpenAI.com released it in November of 2022, creating a buzz in many areas, including higher education. The focus of higher education on this new tool has primarily been academic dishonesty. Although this is a significant concern with ChatGPT, this paper focuses on its usage as a learning tool to help teach programming to management information systems students.

The paper’s brief literature review focuses on ChatGPT’s background and history. A study of how ChatGPT works at a high level is …

Sea Turtle Conservation At Tortuguero: A Case On How To Turn An Ecological Challenge Into A Collaborative Opportunity For Research, Education Outreach, And Business Development, Minh Q. Huynh, Jose Noguera, Roldán A. Valverde

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

This paper provides an overview of sea turtle research and conservation at Tortuguero. The conservation work began in 1950 and is still active. How did this effort to conserve sea turtles get started and how did this process help turn an ecological challenge into a global collaborative initiative? This case is not just about sea turtle conservation, but more importantly it is about approaching a complex problem from multiple perspectives and finding innovative ways to mitigate the problem. Though the focus is on sea turtles, the process, approach, and experience learned from this case can be adapted for guidance in …

The Career Project: An Intervention To Facilitate Career Development, Dale E. Rude, Marina Sebastijanovic, Jamie K. Belinne, Troy D. Hopkins

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Students face substantial challenges in readying for their professional lives. They must select a field, find a suitable job within that field, and lay a foundation for their career. To aid with this, we present the career project, an efficient career- and self-exploration assignment. The project comprises a resume assessment, identifying short-term and long-term career goals, backup plans, personal strengths and selling points, conducting organizational research, an informational interview with someone in their desired field, and a market assessment by a knowledgeable professional. We tested the project efficacy with 803 students (two treatment groups and two controls) during an ‘Introduction …

Teaching Sql In An On-Line Learning Environment: Considering For Selecting A Relational Database, Marion Smith

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

In today’s business environment, students entering the workplace are expected to have problem-solving skills as well as an understanding of fundamental database concepts. Interns and new hires must be able to identify, extract and manipulate data that typically reside in a relational database. To meet this expectation, students are introduced to database concepts and SQL in a variety of courses. This paper discusses instructor considerations when selecting a database management system for teaching SQ on-line

The Impact Of Adaptive Learning In Principles Of Microeconomics, Doris S. Bennett, Cynthia S. Mccarty, Michael S. Carter

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Abstract

The spread of Covid-19, which forced almost all learning to move to online in March, 2020, abruptly increased the number of undergraduates taking at least one online course by approximately 177% between the fall of 2019 and the spring of 2020 (Koksal, 2020; Carey, 2020; National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). Even without the Covid-19 disruption, online education has become increasing prevalent due to the decreasing allocation of resources to higher education and the pressure on college administrators to make a college education effective, affordable, and accessible for more students. Originally online instruction differed from in-class instruction only be …

Teaching, Learning And Academic Integrity During The Pandemic, William Saunders, Carlton Perkins

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Abstract

The COVID 19 pandemic is responsible for instructional delivery changes in the higher education environment. The forced closing of many traditional classrooms, and teaching virtually, is taking the transfer of knowledge to students into a different realm. Adjustments must be made by students and professors alike to ensure that students continue to learn. However, as institutions transition away from the face to face classroom setting to the virtual platform, opportunities for cheating increases and changes to teaching and assessment should be implemented. Included among the innovations and adjustments must be testing and assessment methods that will hopefully guarantee learning …

Impacts Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Business Education: Case For The Aacsb’S Agility Standard, Lucy Ojode, Mulugeta Wolde, June Claiborne

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

We explored an undergraduate business program’s navigation of an unplanned change, response to the Covid-19 pandemic-occasioned move to online learning, and the resilience of its curriculum by following cohorts of students through two consecutive courses from the end of 2019 through 2020 up to summer 2021. The exploration was aimed at the assessment of the impact of the pandemic-induced disruptions, i.e., how the school’s curriculum fared through the pandemic. Premised on the school’s accreditor, AACSB’s agility-cultivating curriculum guideline, the curriculum should adapt and stabilize post-pandemic. To identify the appropriate cohort for observation, we scrutinized the four progressive levels of agility …

Administering Online Exams From Hesitantly To Innovatively - A Personal Perspective Through An Action Research, Minh Q. Huynh

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

In the midst of COVID-19, university campuses were shut down and faculty had to move their classes online. The abrupt change opened up many challenges. One of them was how to handle online exams. This paper recounted how one instructor had managed the exams online. The paper presents this experience from an action research perspective. At the core is the narrative that captures the exam design process, the tools used, and the proctoring setup. The results are based on the interpretation of the phenomenon through a lens of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). The insights …

Incorporating Online Simulated Environments Into An Mis Curriculum To Accommodate For Disruptions Caused By The Covid-19 Pandemic, Richard Taylor, Marion Smith

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

The Covid-19 pandemic has become a major disruption to colleges and universities around the world with most institutions moving to online-only instruction. As a result, the use of controlled environments to deliver hands-on experiences in typical MIS curriculum courses, such as programming, database management, network administration, information security, and web design was no longer available. This paper discusses a variety of simulated environments where students get hands-on experiences to replace the traditional learning environment in a classroom or computer lab setting.

Fostering Engagement And Learning In Students Through Assignment Modifications During Covid-19, Madhu Bala Sahoo

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Critical thinking and innovative problem solving are two crucial skills for management students to develop in this fast-changing business world. These skills are even more relevant in today’s turbulent times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Case analysis and simulation games are popular pedagogical tools to develop these skills in a classroom setting. Remote learning due to COVID-19 has made it challenging for instructors to use these tools effectively. While working within the same course timeframe and budgets, an instructor in a national southern university, opportunistically used the current context of COVID-19 to modify a written assignment for an introductory HR course …

Covid-19: Impact On Business Students' Transition From Face-To-Face To Online Instructional Delivery, Beverly A. Bryant, Cynthia R. Mayo, Keisha M. Williams, Danielle Colbert-Lewis

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world to its proverbial core with institutions for higher learning caught in the crosshairs. Consequently, every facet of higher education has been indelibly affected. Traditional classroom instruction immediately changed, and a nontraditional delivery method emerged inclusive of both hybrid and online instruction. This delivery method was new to many students as all instruction shifted from face-to-face to virtual. To mitigate the spread of the virus, immediate action was required and campuses had to determine the probability of closing. This was a challenge for many reasons, some students did not have the resources to …

Teaching Coding In A Virtual Environment: Overcoming Challenges, Marion S. Smith

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Educational research suggests that teaching techniques are subject matter specific. Teaching techniques in introductory programming classes are centered around two approaches used by students in learning. One approach is where students develop a thorough understanding of what they are learning. This is referred to as “deep learning”. Other students use a “surface approach” where they perform the tasks required from them. The persona of the instructor and the choice of instructional materials used within a class determines which approach the student will adopt. Active teaching techniques fosters “deep learning”. With the need to adapt active teaching techniques to a virtual …

Business Intelligence Illustrated Using Crime Data As An Instructional Tool, Ruth Robbins

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

In the Management Information Systems classroom, faculty are encouraged to provide a student focused learning environment that focuses on utilizing business and industry practices as tools. Examples should incorporate concepts which students can readily comprehend. With this in mind, the City of Houston Uniform Crime Report Statistics spreadsheet and database data is being utilized in a College of Business MIS program. In this paper, examples will be described which provide illustrations showing how this ever changing Crime Report data provides an instructional landscape that students can readily recognize and which can also be used as a tool that reinforces learning. …

People Analytics And Disruptive Technologies Are Transforming Human Resources Roles, Madhu Bala Sahoo

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Human Resources Information Systems that collect, store, and analyze people data are beginning to view the role of people analytics and other related technologies favorably as they provide new, timely and objective insights which aid in bringing about a transformational change in the roles of HR. People analytics is thus an excellent platform for HR to achieve its long awaited ‘Strategic Partner’ role. Organizations of all sizes and types are adopting and adapting to people analytics. Several well-known companies have recently demonstrated the benefits of using people analytics for HR functions. However, people analytics is not without roadblocks of unethical …

An Evaluation Of Three Online Chatbots, Mahesh Vanjani, Jamison Posey, Milam Aiken

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Chatbots enable machines to emulate human conversation. While research has been done to examine how human-like communication with chatbots can be, heretofore comparisons of the systems with humans have not accounted for abnormal behavior from the users. For example, the people using the chatbot might be lying or trying to, in turn, imitate a computer’s response. Results of a study comparing transcripts from three chatbots and two humans show that student evaluators were able to correctly identify two computer transcripts, but failed on one. Further, they incorrectly guessed that one of the humans was a chatbot. The study also presents …

Evaluating The Knowledge Of Conversational Agents, Mina Park, Milam Aiken, Mahesh Vanjani

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Several studies have tested chatbots for their abilities to emulate human conversation, but few have evaluated the systems’ general knowledge. In this study, we asked two chatbots (Mitsuku and Tutor) and a digital assistant (Cortana) several questions and compared their answers to 67 humans’ answers. Results showed that while Tutor and Cortana performed poorly, the accuracies of Mitsuku and the humans were not significantly different. As expected, the chatbots and Cortana answered factual questions more accurately than abstract questions.

Social Media And The C-Suite: The Ethical And Legal Implications, Toni P. Mulvaney J.D., Melissa Baldo J.D., Marleen Swerdlow J.D., Frank Cavaliere J.D.

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

The last twenty years has seen phenomenal growth of social media, with companies such as Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter seeing their registered users growing into the hundreds of millions worldwide (and, in the case of Facebook, over a billion). The advantages of using social media have been touted by many, and fortunes have been made by savvy practitioners with a deft hand at using social media to their advantage. However, as with any new technology unintended consequences have begun to unfold. These consequences have been thrust to the forefront as several high-profile corporate executives and celebrities have sabotaged their …

The Flipped Class: Experiential Learning Manifested, Johnnie Williams, Olusegun Felix Ayadi, Carlton Perkins, Ladelle M. Hyman

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Through the “flipped class,” students are introduced to new material outside the classroom before the traditional in-class lecture occurs. Ideally, flipping the class challenges students to engage in the lower levels cognitive work (remembering and understanding) outside of class. Students, then, are free to focus on higher order cognitive work (application, analysis, synthesis, and/or evaluation) in class, where they have the support of their peers and the instructor. To drive the requisite higher order cognitive work inside the classroom, it is important that in-class teaching and learning methodologies extend beyond simple information dissemination. Experiential learning, the process of transforming information …

Implications Of Social Media Use On Instruction And Student Learning: An Exploratory Study, Mayur Desai, Lucy Ojode

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Despite being a norm in contemporary organizations including in academia, there is limited understanding how multimedia technology use might impact learning. We have also seen a rise in the use of social media applications such as Facebook, tweeter, Instagram, skype, flickr, and blogging among students, but it is unclear the extent to which the academe embraces these applications. In this study, we examine the potential role of multimedia technology and social media use in the learning process. We explore the potential implications for instruction and on student learning of the marriage between multimedia technology and social media use. Focusing on …

Leveraging Decision Making In Cyber Security Analysis Through Data Cleaning, Chen Zhong, Hong Liu, Awny Alnusair

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) have been built in many institutions for intrusion detection and incident response. A SOC employs various cyber defense technologies to continually monitor and control network traffic. Given the voluminous monitoring data, cyber security analysts need to identify suspicious network activities to detect potential attacks. As the network monitoring data are generated at a rapid speed and contain a lot of noise, analysts are so bounded by tedious and repetitive data triage tasks that they can hardly concentrate on in-depth analysis for further decision making. Therefore, it is critical to employ data cleaning methods in cyber situational …