Technology Evolves Walton College Curriculum

Ten years ago, University of Arkansas business students had to master Hewlett Packard 10-B calculators by their senior year. Now, many Sam M. Walton College of Business Administration freshmen are downloading databases off the Internet that take seconds to manhandle lengthy calculations.

Today’s business students are bringing more high-tech savvy to the table. But that’s not the only reason the curriculum is evolving at the UA’s Walton College. More than $2.8 million was spent last summer to turn 28 undergraduate classrooms into interactive business laboratories — where Internet access and visual- aid gadgets make a morning of class seem more like an afternoon at the movies.

Bob Hails, Walton College’s director of distance education, said because the curriculum is being made more visual and entertaining, it’s also becoming more fun.

“Technology is making the curriculum easier for students to learn,” Hails said. “Especially in the classes where faculty really take advantage of the teaching tools we have, learning is much more engaging.”

The college’s high-tech teaching tools include local-access networked computers loaded with Microsoft Office 2000. There are even chat-room capabilities through course Web sites that create virtual study groups and offer powerpoint presentations from class lectures. And that’s not even counting the high-tech, high-dollar bells and whistles used by the school’s distance-education or master’s degree programs.

Walton College Dean Doyle Williams said the point is not only to entertain, but to enlighten. And he said the feedback the college has received from students shows it’s doing both. He’s also impressed with the way the faculty has embraced technology.

“The impact of the tools we’ve been fortunate enough to acquire is that they have expedited learning and taken it to a new level,” Williams said. “It’s enabled faculty to bring in more resources off the Internet, and not just deliver the materials in a more contemporary way, but to stimulate interest and further learning all together.”

Bill Hargrave is an associate professor in the computer information systems and quantitative analysis department. He’s also executive director of the information technology research center, and the Ph.D. coordinator or the college’s doctoral program in computer information systems.

Hargrave said there’s no comparison between the college’s curriculum now and seven years ago when he arrived. The college was innovative in using the Internet as part of curriculum in 1995, since that was before most people knew what it was.

“Back then, the Web was still competing with something called Gopher,” Hargrave said. “We still offer a one-hour course that teaches word processing and databases, but that class is going away because students now come into college with those skills.

“The usage of databases and spreadsheets is taken as a given by professors. By the time you’re a junior or senior those are business tools you’re expected to just know.”