George Conrade, of UD's Department of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management, wants to help his managerial accounting students gain an in-depth understanding of duties faced by executives in the hospitality industry. To accomplish this, he and the staff of PRESENT are combining technologies such as Microsoft Excel with the functionality of MyCourses to develop Managerial Accounting Practice Sets (MAPS).
"Two of the core competencies expected of both middle managers and senior and top executives in the hospitality industry are managing finances and decision-making." Conrade's MyCourses site allows students to develop these skills through mock-management exercises. The duties and considerations of the hospitality industry are unique and varied, and the site provides students with the data they must keep track of when managing hospitality resources, such as total departmental income, gross operating profit, and management fees.
In their general ledgers, students are supplied with many of the values they will need to know in order to complete important calculations. Here, we see that a hotel manager must be aware of such diverse data as number of available rooms, beverage inventory balance, and allowance for doubtful accounts.
Throughout the course, the students will use the information they compile to complete individualized online quizzes. While grading hundreds of unique pieces of output for a single quiz would seem daunting, MyCourses technology automates many of these assessments.Besides the reduction in paperwork, this allows Conrade to devote more attention to developing effective classroom lessons, while students are given hands-on training in developing and maintaining their own ledgers. "My belief in active learning, and what it means, is particularly important in a subject like Managerial Accounting. The content of this course is not something that you can learn simply by coming to class and listening to the instructor, or by reading a book. The topics must be applied and practiced."
Conrade is also using the MyCourses site to post general information, such as a syllabus that contains course objectives, common corporate philosophies, and an assignment schedule which his students can continually refer to. Further, important terms in the online course objectives are linked directly to other important information on the HRIM site.
Finally, while learning new skills is always the ultimate goal, earning a high grade is also a concern for most students. Accordingly, Conrade's site contains clear instructions and examples of the various assignments, as well as a grading scheme that works in conjunction with MyCourses tools to provide clear, constantly updated grade information for each student.
George Conrade