Determinants Of Instructors Influence On Selection Of A Major In An Integrated Introductory Business Course

Abstract

Increasingly, as part of a desire to improve student understanding of the integrative nature of business, more and more schools are introducing interdisciplinary courses into the curriculum. These courses may also assist students with their choice of major.  Generally, courses of this type are offered at the introductory level and may be structured in a variety of ways. Many questions still exist about the overall effectiveness of these courses with respect to teaching an understanding of integration, the appropriateness of alternative course designs, and how they might influence the selection of a major.  Our institution has had such an Introductory Business Course for more than a decade. The course has always contained a process of continuous quality improvement .The course has evolved rather significantly during the last decade. One of its most recent and substantive changes has been to move from having multiple faculty members teaching each section to having each section taught by a single instructor. We felt that it was critical to examine the effectiveness of this change with regard to teaching, and also to see if the use of the single instructor model impacted student selection of a business major.  The paper evaluates the effectiveness of faculty members to teach material outside their discipline. It also examines for the possible influence by instructors on selection of majors in the instructor’s discipline in an introductory business course.