By Dan Ly, Director of Teaching and Learning

As part of our commitment to continuously improve OER course materials to strengthen learning, we released an updated edition of Lumen’s most-adopted Waymaker course, Introduction to Business, on July 1, 2019. With all the improvements we’ve added over the past year, we’re confident this latest version of the course provides a much more engaging and effective learning experience for students, compared to earlier editions. 

What’s Improved?

Over 10,000 students have used Waymaker Introduction to Business during the past academic year. We’ve analyzed their learning data and listened to faculty feedback to help us identify and make content updates, including interactive learning activities, to keep it current and relevant. 

Adding to improvements released last December, the latest updates include:

  • New Module 17: Using Technology to Manage Business Information with new OER content and embedded practice questions
  • Updated Module 3: Global Environment with up-to-date coverage and status of NAFTA/USMCA
  • Updated Module 13: Marketing Function now includes examples of real corporate value statements from well-known companies
  • Updated Module 14: Marketing Mix has been revised to reflect the way this topic is typically taught in introductory business, with a focus on breadth of coverage 
  • Updated PowerPoint slide decks for each module have been reorganized to include in-class participation opportunities and better align with learning objectives. View Chapter 1 slides
  • Assessments have been revised based on learning data that helped us identify where improvements needed to be made to better support student learning
  • Interactive practice questions in each module invite students to engage with the material, test their knowledge, and improve learning 

Content that Improves Continuously 

Because this course is designed using open educational resources (OER), we have the ability to make timely improvements to strengthen learning for everyone using our courses. Each term we use behavioral and assessment data to analyze where the content isn’t supporting effective student learning. We work with subject matter experts and instructional designers to diagnose problems and design improvements to make the content more effective.  The following term we can test updates to see what’s working and where to target the next set of improvements. 

If you have content or suggestions you would like to contribute to help improve this course, send an email to support@lumenlearning.com or share feedback using this form. Or consider joining our upcoming Virtual Hackathon on Thursday, July 18th starting at either 9 am EST or 5 pm EST (click on your preferred time to learn more and register).

Ways to Explore This Course: 

Access to Lumen Courses

Check out Lumen’s other courses in Business:

To review and adopt Introduction to Business or any other Lumen course, follow these steps:

  • Review course materials in the public catalog
  • Click the “Try This Course” button to inform us which course(s) you’re interested in OR send an email to support@lumenlearning.com to request a course

 

To start teaching with Lumen course materials, you’ll need to take the easy step of importing a new cartridge into your LMS. After that, you can go through your regular course setup steps to customize the materials to fit your syllabus and how you teach your course.