Exploring cross-disciplinary differences in course mode, instructional tools and teaching methods in online courses in business & management

Building on research from past decades, this paper explores cross-disciplinary curricular and teaching differences in online, blended and web-facilitated business and management courses. Based on an online survey of 240 USA, Canadian and European university instructors, the authors examine if faculty differ in their preferred course mode (the degree of online delivery), instructional tools used, and teaching methods, by discipline types (hard or soft) and five subject groups. The research found cross-disciplinary differences in the use of some of the 29 instructional tools surveyed (e.g. online group projects, group tools like wikis, and specialized software) and in teaching methods (didactic, dialectic dialogic, dialectic collaborative and heuristic). No significant disciplinary differences were found in the instructor's choice of course mode perhaps pointing to wider engagement in online learning in all business and management disciplines.