Teaching Team

The teaching team over the first several semesters consisted of Ron Yezzi, the lead instructor, technical consultant Jerry L. Jeffries, and student interns Jon Gaalswyck, Harold Perkins, and Harvey Zachman, . The student interns no longer are taking courses at MSU; but I am extremely appreciative of the valuable assistance they provided in working with students taking the course.

Jerry L. Jeffries

Jerry Jeffries was the first wizard from MSU's Electronic Academy who solved technical problems involved in getting the content of this course on the internet. Jerry is the one who made possible the tabulation of Attitude Survey Results and worked out the mechanics for making group discussions possible.

Ryan Schneider

Ryan Schneider is the current technical wizard for the course. He has taken on the task of transferring the course material to Desire2Learn (D2L). And he comes up with solutions to problems I have in setting up the course.

Ron Yezzi

You can find quite a bit of information about me by going to my Home Page:
http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~yezzi/
I just want to express here some thoughts about the course.

Teaching this business ethics course over the internet is a new experience for me, and I view it as a worthwhile experiment. I have the opportunity to try a different teaching method that probably will come into more widespread use in the near future.

Distance learning has the great advantage that it frees a student from class attendance at a particular time and place--an advantage of potentially great benefit to many students.

The concept of distance learning however is not particularly new, since there have been a variety of correspondence courses offered in educational institutions over the years. What is new, because of the internet, is the capability for instant communication and for quick access to large amounts of information. Distance learning now has the capacity for quicker exchanges of information between students and instructors, for greater student involvement in group activities, and for simpler access to valuable background information. Some of the more discouraging aspects of correspondence courses in the past are surmountable.

As a philosophy professor who has never taught courses in large lecture halls, I am well aware that face-to-face interaction in a classroom is highly conducive to learning. A live instructor, ready to act instantly and creatively to situations as they arise, is an extraordinarly valuable resource not to be dismissed lightly. Any wholesale attempt therefore to replace traditional forms of learning with internet courses, especially if it occurs for financial reasons, is misguided.

I think however that internet courses can meet the needs of significant numbers of students. Moreover, I suspect that an internet course may be more successful than a regular classroom in getting every student actively involved in a course. The silence and detachment of many students that instructors frequently encounter in classrooms and lecture halls become impossible when each student has the responsibility to contribute to class activities, even if over the internet rather than face-to-face.

I hope that you find the experiment interesting, useful, and enjoyable.

Ron Yezzi

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