Building Lectures and Building Bridges with Socio-economically Disadvantaged Students

This paper is an empirical analysis of the first stage of an ongoing effort to introduce technology to enhance student learning in introductory corporate finance within a multi-campus and multi-mode regional Australian University. The engagement and performance of low socio-economic status (SES) students is of particular interest because approximately one-quarter of the university’s enrolled students are classified low SES. A Tablet PC is used to facilitate a cooperative ‘building’ of each week’s lecture in class and the recording of this process for delivery online. The analysis of the academic achievement of two cohorts of students in two different semesters—with the technology and without—forms the basis of the formal evaluation of the efficacy of the approach to date. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in retention (drop-out statistics) and academic achievement (examination performance, final grade and course progression statistics) between the ‘Tablet PC’ and ‘control’ semesters. The largest improvement was exhibited by the low SES students.

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