Evaluating an interactive learning environment in management education

This paper reports the results and implications for management education of an empirical study evaluating the impact of interaction among learners on their knowledge and performance in a judgmental decision making task context. The results indicate that interaction had a significant positive effect on individual learning over time. Interactive learners were found to make significantly smaller decision errors over time than during the earlier stages of their decision task. This was not true for their non-interactive counterparts. The study also found a significant positive effect of interaction on learners’ overall decision accuracy. Interactive learners tended to make smaller decision errors than their non-interactive counterparts irrespective of the stage of their decision making process. These results suggest that future management education needs to consider forms of interactive learning in response to environment pressures for faster and more effective learning.