Customized Content Delivery for Graduate Management Education: Application to Business Statistics

Globalization is bringing about a radical “rethink” regarding the delivery of graduate management education. Today, many students entering a residential MBA program do not possess an undergraduate degree in business. As a result, many business schools are increasingly turning to the Internet to provide “customized” instructional content to ensure that students can remain competitive throughout the program. The purpose of this paper is threefold: 1) to estimate student performance in a residential MBA program; 2) to outline a process for identifying specific learning support resources based on student backgrounds and capabilities; and 3) to illustrate the screening process in providing business statistics support content to students requiring additional preparation. The results show that neural net based classification techniques can effectively identify students for the purpose of providing additional learning resources. Business statistics is one area in which this screening process has been used to deliver specialized content to students with a variety of backgrounds enrolled in a MBA residential program.

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