Student interactions in online discussion forums: their perception on learning with business simulation games

Digital technology offers new teaching methods with controversial results over learning. They allow students to develop a more active participation in their learning process although it does not always drive to unequivocal better learning outcomes. This study aims to offer additional evidence on the contribution of business simulation games to students' learning outcomes, considering student interactions in online discussion forums. We conducted a qualitative research with the online discussion forums of 5 different courses at bachelor and master levels, which involves 41 students' teams. The final sample was composed of 3681 messages posted by the students. The results reveal that some generic and specific managerial skills exert a positive influence on learning outcomes. Students mostly highlighted teamwork, decision-making, information processing, reaching agreements, and dealing with uncertainty as the most relevant contributions of the game towards their learning. These results have instructional and pedagogical implications for determining the best way to enhance students' motivation and learning outcomes when using digital technology methods, which involves recommendations that affect their design and monitoring

Do business games foster skills? A cross-cultural study from learners’ views

Purpose: This study seeks to analyse students’ perception of the effectiveness of business games as an e-learning method in management training. This analysis of games’ effectiveness is centred in the generic and managerial skills acquired, through the comparison of students’ opinions in different cultural contexts within Europe. Design/methodology: The analysis focuses on 120 management students at postgraduate level who use the same business game at different universities in five European countries: Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Germany. Findings: The results indicate that students positively assessed the generic and specific managerial skills fostered by the business game. The generic skills most valued were information and decision-making, and leadership. Regarding the specific skills, the most valued were management skills and the least valued, skills related to planning and the acquisition of theoretical knowledge. However, significant differences were found between students in different cultural contexts and education systems in the case of certain specific managerial skills. Practical implications: This finding suggests that the students’ perception of how a business game helps them acquire specific managerial skills is influenced by cultural aspects and previous exposure to experiential learning, which determine that the teachers’ role and the teaching process should be adapted to the students’ learning model. Originality/value: With this study, a better knowledge about the students’ perception of this e-learning method is obtained, not just considering a specific educational environment, but comparing opinions of students from different cultural contexts, which adds value to the analyses developed.Peer Reviewe

Psychometrics in Practice at RCEC

A broad range of topics is dealt with in this volume: from combining the psychometric generalizability and item response theories to the ideas for an integrated formative use of data-driven decision making, assessment for learning and diagnostic testing. A number of chapters pay attention to computerized (adaptive) and classification testing. Other chapters treat the quality of testing in a general sense, but for topics like maintaining standards or the testing of writing ability, the quality of testing is dealt with more specifically.\ud All authors are connected to RCEC as researchers. They present one of their current research topics and provide some insight into the focus of RCEC. The selection of the topics and the editing intends that the book should be of special interest to educational researchers, psychometricians and practitioners in educational assessment

Research on the reasoning, teaching and learning of probability and uncertainty

In this editorial, we set out the aims in the call to publish papers on informal statistical inference, randomness, modelling and risk. We discuss how the papers published in this issue have responded to those aims. In particular, we note how the nine papers contribute to some of the major debates in mathematics and statistics education, often taking contrasting positions. Such debates range across: (1) whether knowledge is fractured or takes the form of mental models; (2) heuristic or intuitive thinking versus operational thinking as for example in dual process theory; (3) the role of different epistemic resources, such as perceptions, modelling, imagery, in the development of probabilistic reasoning; (4) how design and situation impact upon probabilistic learning

Provocateurs for Justice

Clinical legal education offers unique opportunities to inspire law students to commit to justice. Merely providing a justice experience is not enough. We must provoke a desire to do justice in our students. As provocateurs, we determine where our students are in the developmental process toward justice readiness. This article outlines those developmental stages and suggests interventions to assist students in their transition from stage to stage. Being justice ready requires sensitivity to the ways in which assumptions color all aspects of our cases. The article closes with suggestions and examples of how to critically reflect on assumptions that hinder social justice

Using Case Work as a Pretest to Measure Crisis Leadership Preparedness

Today’s leaders must thrive in a world of turbulence and constant change. Unstable conditions frequently generate crises, emphasizing the need for crisis leadership preparedness, which is missing from many business curricula. Thus, the purpose of this work was to develop a learning module in crisis leadership preparedness. As a baseline measure or pretest, 217 graduate students were asked to analyze two crisis leadership cases during the first week of an entry leadership class. Content analysis provided the method to identify where student analyses fell short. These gaps in learning then informed the creation of student learning objectives. Applying inquiry-based learning, I then suggest instructional methods that I incorporated into an active learning module to better prepare today’s leaders for crisis leadership