Paper Title
An Examination of Effectiveness of Different Approaches to Teaching Quantitative Methods At Undergraduate Level in Higher Education
Abstract
Methods (hereafter, referred as QM) is a problem-solving discipline which applies mathematical and statistical methods such as numerical or quantitative techniques to solve business, economic and financial problems. However, there is a concern about a quantitative methods deficit in output, teaching and learning, in UK social science (Williams and Paynes 2007). Scholars argued that UK social science was mainly qualitative with the receptions of psychology and economics. Business Studies as one of the main academic disciplines within social science is also facing the weakness of teaching and learning in QM. Gonul and Solano (2013) state that business school undergraduate students struggle with statistics subjects such as QM and their discomfort hinders their performance in more advanced quantitative related courses. One of the main reasons for this is because students find QM is technically difficult. This study aims to find out in which ways we could stimulate and enhance students’ teaching and learning experience in studying QM. We advocate a problem-solving approach class to teach QM, which means not teaching is given in the class but students do the homework exercise in the class (Flipped Class). There is evidence to support that the problem-solving exercise class significantly improve students’ learning compared with the traditional didactic teaching class.
Keywords - Quantitative Methods, Didactic Teaching, Problem-Solving Approach (flipped class)