摘要:This study investigates the impact of McGraw-Hill's Connect. LearnSmartAchieve (LSA) on student writing outcomes at a regional AACSB-accredited business school. The authors analyzed a total of 172 student writing samples before and after the introduction of selected LSA modules in six junior-level business communication courses from 2015 to 2016. This study targets grammatical, mechanical, and sentence-level errors that employers and educators have identified as potentially damaging to a student's professional image. In 2015, a control group (pre-LSA) of 85 online and face-to-face students was given standard teacher-led grammar/mechanics instruction in these problematic areas in multiple contexts throughout the semester. In 2016, instructors introduced 87 online and face-to-face students (post-LSA) to the selected LSA modules to be completed within a six-week period early in the semester at the students' own pace and outside the classroom. When comparing the average number of errors in the pre- and post-LSA groups, the authors noted statistically significant differences; overall, the average number of most writing errors was lower in the post-LSA group. These findings indicate that web-assisted instruction, such as McGraw-Hill's Connect. LearnSmartAchieve, can provide students and instructors with a valuable resource for improving writing outcomes in business communication.
关键词:Web-assisted instruction; business communication; writing instruction; assessment