Enhancing Minority Student Leadership Skills Using Case Studies

Abstract

This study reports on a controlled experiment using undergraduate African American students at one of the United States' Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Information technology rich multimedia instructional materials were implemented in an attempt to increase the level of perceived leadership skills in the classroom. A comparison was conducted to examine the various attitudes and perceptions of minority students using multimedia case studies versus traditional teaching methods. The results suggest that the use of multimedia case studies in minority classrooms has the potential to improve perceived leadership skills more so than traditional teaching methods. It is important to note, however, that the social, cultural, and psychological nuances associated with individual ethnic groups are extremely complex and possibly beyond the scope of this research.

• Computer aided learning
• Engineering Education
• Multimedia systems
• Information Technology