Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education 

C 2009, Decision Sciences Institute

Volume 7 Number 2 Journal compilation 

C 2009, Decision Sciences Institute

July 2009
Printed in the U.S.A.

TEACHING BRIEF

Student Dialogue with Online Guest

Speakers
Daniel M. Eveleth† and Lori J. Baker-Eveleth
College of Business and Economics, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844,
e-mail: eveleth@uidaho.edu, leveleth@uidaho.edu

Guest speakers are common on university campuses and in a variety of disciplines

(e.g., Ballard, 2008; Bell, 2007; Hartmus, Cauthen, & Levine, 2006). Guests pos-
sess a certain degree of credibility that serves to reinforce course concepts. In
addition, guests’ examples add breadth to the examples students receive from
other sources, a basic tenet of social learning theory (Bandura, 1986). Here we
describe an extension of the traditional guest speaker activity using a discussion
thread inside course management software (e.g., Blackboard) to link students with
guests outside the typical reach of a university campus. The activity can be used
in a variety of courses and offers benefits that would be harder to achieve in a
traditional face-to-face setting.

ONLINE GUEST SPEAKERS

Social constructivist learning theorists suggest that collaboration between students
and others outside the university community is essential for effective learning
(Hodgkinson-Williams, Slay, & Sieborger, 2008). Mittleman and Briggs (1999)
categorize collaborative activities based on the location of the participants and
the time when the participants contribute to the collaborative effort. Using this
framework, a traditional guest speaker experience is one where the students and
guest interact at the same time and in the same place. Ballard (2008) extended the
traditional guest speaker activity, using a telephone-based activity to include guests
who interact with students at the same time, but in different places. The activity
described here allows students and the guest to participate at different times while
in different places.
WebCT and Blackboard are two education-oriented software platforms that
we have used to create discussion threads for collaboration between students and
guests. More recently, in response to requests by our stakeholders, we have used
Microsoft SharePoint for the activity. Communication in these environments is
asynchronous and takes place in a password-protected environment, thus allowing
conversations to be confidential and without space and time limitations. In addi-
tion, the software captures the dialogue between students and a guest so that the

† Corresponding author.

417
418 Teaching Brief

transcripts can be used at a later date (e.g., to write a report and prepare for an
examination).

THE GUEST SPEAKER ACTIVITY

We have routinely used the activity in the following courses: Leadership and Orga-
nizational Behavior, Managing Technical Teams, Human Resources Management,
and Business Telecommunications Management. While the courses include a vari-
ety of topics and student backgrounds, the basic process and deliverables are very
similar in each course.

Preparation
A key feature of the activity is that student teams (two to four students each) invite
the guests. We include this requirement for three reasons. First, when students
select a guest the statements by the guest provide perceived credibility. Often
students will select a person they admire (e.g., a parent) or a contact of a person
they admire (e.g., the network manager at a friend’s employer), and thus, students
will be motivated to participate and the salience of the guest’s message is high.
Second, guests often report to us about being honored by the invitation and excited
to participate. Third, requiring students to invite a guest ensures that the activity
will be unique each semester.
Instructions about selecting a guest vary slightly depending on the purpose
of the activity. In the leadership course, for example, the topics cut across a
wide array of settings, so we give the students very general instructions. In the
telecommunications course where the focus of the activity is limited to managing
networks, we give the students more specific instructions than in other courses.
Consider the following examples:

[Leaderships course] Consider inviting a supervisor, a friend who performs in

a band, an uncle who owns and manages a fishing boat in Alaska, a soccer
coach, a favorite teacher, a stay-at-home parent or a military veteran. In general,
you can invite any person who may have an insight or useful opinion about
managing individuals and leadership skills.
[Telecommunications] Invite a network manager with one or more years of
experience. If you do not know a network manager consider contacting an
organization that interests you or a former employer, use your personal and
professional contacts to identify network managers in companies where your
contact works, or talk to your professor for ideas.

Students select dates for their guest’s visit on a first-come-first-served basis

by sending an e-mail with the name, title, and contact information of the guest and
the preferred date of the visit.
We instruct each team to have their guest prepare opening remarks (approx-
imately one typed page) similar to opening remarks a guest might make if he or
she was visiting the class face-to-face. While we tell students to allow the guest
significant latitude, we tell them that at least two different types of opening remarks
have been particularly successful:
Eveleth and Baker-Eveleth 419

1. Tell a brief story or example that can give students one or two insights
about the course topics. For example, a guest in the leadership course de-
scribed a situation involving the merger of two hospitals and the strategies
he used to overcome resistance to change.
2. Describe the current challenges and opportunities facing the guests in
their role (e.g., as a network manager).

The Visit
Each team (and guest) is assigned a separate discussion thread. The team posts a
short introduction to initiate the thread. Their guest then posts his or her opening
statements and accepts questions from all students over the span of 1 week. Two
guest visits running simultaneously is an ideal number. Because the communication
is asynchronous a guest can participate at any time. For example, a guest might log
on each day or only log on three times during the week (e.g., Sunday for the initial
post, Wednesday to address early questions, and Saturday to answer remaining
questions). In some cases the guest will choose to funnel questions and responses
via e-mail to a student host who posts and retrieves comments to and from the
thread. This is another instance where we give the guests significant latitude. If
the guest prefers to post and retrieve comments directly then we assign the guest a
log-in name and password (requested from the on-campus software administrator).
Approximately, one-third of guests in the past have chosen to post directly, while
the remaining two-thirds chose to work through their student host to post and
retrieve comments. The process works well in either case.
Participation in the discussions is a major component of the course participa-
tion score and is quantified by counting students’ posts and sampling the contents
of each student’s posts. To help students think about useful questions we perform
a variety of behaviors:
• Prior to the start of each visit, teams are required to identify questions that
could be asked.
• We schedule only one guest during the first week of the activity as a way to
practice proper behaviors. During this visit we take a few minutes in class
to display the thread and to highlight useful posts and to brainstorm added
questions that could be asked.
• We model expected behavior by posting one comment on each thread
(usually later in the week) that includes a “thank-you” to the guest and a
short comment or question. We limit our participation in each discussion
so that the emphasis is on students collaborating with guests. However, we
reinforce the perception that we are observing the discussions by referring
to specific instances from the discussions during lecture.

After the Visit

A second graded deliverable is a five-page team report and a handwritten thank-
you note written to their guest. In the more general courses we ask students to
identify and describe links between the guest’s discussion and course concepts
and between the guest’s discussion and other guests’ comments. For example,
420 Teaching Brief

a team might find that a principal, a hospital manager, and a naval officer used
similar influence tactics to persuade subordinates to accept a change. In the more
specific course (i.e., telecommunications) we ask students to identify and describe
the major challenges and opportunities facing at least three guests and to support
the conclusions with secondary research. Students often report being surprised
that network managers list “managing people” as a greater challenge than software
development or managing hardware, for example. A key aspect of the activity is
that in each case students are asked to look for commonality and connections.
We tell students to assume that the guests, the textbook, the lectures, and other
course materials all have something to offer, and that the goal of the discussion
and the report is to find and report on those things. We feel that this emphasis on
finding useful insights and linkages neutralizes the potential for students to pit a
guest’s comments against statements from other courses, a problem we have never
faced.

EFFECTIVENESS
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the activity is well liked and that the visits impact
students’ acceptance and understanding of the material. For example, while the
quality of the reports varies, students have never struggled to find connections
between guests’ statements or connections to course topics. Second, the activity
is consistently mentioned in evaluations as a positive aspect of the courses. In
addition, on the final examination we ask students to identify and describe three
concepts or insights they found most useful from the course. Students are not
prompted to focus on the guest speaker activity in their response, but commonly
do. The following partial examination responses from the leadership course are
good examples:
• The real eye-opening experience was just taking the things that (the guest)
had said in his presentation to the class and relating them to the topics that
we were discussing. This made me realize how these concepts really do
apply in every organization and that there is a point.
• The thought that each and every one of us perceives the very same infor-
mation in different ways is a very abstract concept. I believe that I can feel
my brain twisting as I try to grasp this concept. Just as (the guest) had
to do when he was working with his subordinate, he had to set aside his
perceptions and get to know the subordinate in order to solve the problem.
• I look forward to the day that I am in a position to inspire others to share my
vision for a multi-purpose outreach center. Inspiration from great leaders
like Ernest Shackleton and (the guest) contributes to my learning process in
discovering and developing leadership qualities necessary to see my vision
come to completion.

These three examples highlight the fact that the activity can produce a variety of
learning-oriented benefits. In one instance the activity helped increase the credi-
bility of the course materials (i.e., “concepts really do apply”); in another instance
it showed a student that the guest had experienced similar transformations as she
Eveleth and Baker-Eveleth 421

was experiencing (i.e., “just as the guest had to do”); and in the final instance the
activity inspired the student (i.e., “I look forward to the day”). When students inter-
act with guests in a threaded discussion and then revisit the discussion transcripts
in the context of the course material, it is clear that benefits emerge; some benefits
are similar to those of a face-to-face guest visit and some are unique to the online
environment. The result is enhanced learning.

REFERENCES
Ballard, J. A. (2008). Extending the classroom: The telephone visit. Decision
Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 6(1), 173–177.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundation of thought and action: A social cognitive
theory. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Bell, E. (2007). Bringing research to introductory chemistry classes. FASEB Jour-
nal, 21(5), A39.
Hartmus, D. M., Cauthen, J. N. G., & Levine, J. P. (2006). Enriching student
understanding of trial courts through service learning. Journal of Criminal
Justice Education, 17(1), 23–43.
Hodgkinson-Williams, C., Slay, H., & Sieborger, I. (2008). Developing commu-
nities of practice within and outside higher education institutions. British
Journal of Educational Technologies, 39(3), 433–442.
Mittleman, D., & Briggs, R. (1999). Communication technologies for traditional
and virtual teams. In E. Sundstom (Ed.), Supporting work team effectiveness.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 246–270.

Daniel M. Eveleth is an associate professor of Management and Human Resources

at the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho. His research interests include analogical
reasoning, expertise, leadership and on-line learning. Recent publications include
the International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Educa-
tion, EDUCASE Quarterly, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Education for
Business, and the Journal of Ethics and Behavior.

Lori J. Baker-Eveleth is an associate professor of Information Systems at the Uni-

versity of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho. Her research interests include computer-mediated
communication, virtual teams, and technology and user acceptance. Recent pub-
lications include the Journal of Information Systems Education, EDUCAUSE,
Behaviour & Information Technology, Journal of Informatics Education Research,
Journal of Business and Management, and the Journal of Education for Business.