Abstract

Instructors place an emphasis on preparing students to graduate from college with good decision-making skills needed to be qualified managers. This is done for the purpose of enhancing students’ performance in a real-world work environment. Researchers state that to prepare students to be successful as they go on to enter the work force, it is critical to provide them an education that encompasses higher-order cognitive skills, such as reasoning, problem identification, criteria specification, information search, integrating, interrelating, and problem solving. However, communicating information technology (IT) concepts at the graduate level can be a difficult and challenging task. This is especially true when instructors are faced with a heterogeneous class made of non-traditional students with varied backgrounds in IT. The Laboratory for Innovative Technology and Engineering Education (LITEE) attempts to address these issues by developing and disseminating award-winning, innovative multimedia instructional materials that bring real-world issues into classrooms. This paper conducts a preliminary evaluation on the use of LITEE multimedia instructional materials in a graduate level IT course at a non-traditional institution. The results of this evaluation should help researchers and educators to assess the potential of LITEE multimedia instructional material in facilitating the utilization of higher-order cognitive skills.

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