21st Century Managers and Intuition: Evaluating the learning achieved from an Example of Pedagogic Change for Business Undergraduates

A key requirement for effective research on pedagogy and course redesign is a credible measure (or measures) of student learning on completion of individual modules or even specific teaching initiatives. This has proved difficult to achieve for business courses for some subjects - in particular for the teaching of soft skills such as team working. Traditional methods such as examinations are inappropriate. This paper reports on a novel approach to the evaluation of an exercise, designed to develop business students’ skill of managerial intuition. Changing business conditions are placing a greater value on managers’ ability to deal with open-ended complex (wicked) problems. One academic stream of work has identified that managerial intuition is the key to handling such problems effectively. This, like all skills, can best be acquired through practice. An exercise designed to give small teams of students experience of such a problem was designed for a module delivered during the 1st year of a business degree at Business SchoolX. In parallel students were required to carry out both team and individual reflections that focused on the learning achieved on this exercise. Since the reflective practice was required and marked this ensured that we obtained a comprehensive response from almost all students on the course. Reflective practice can be anonymised and draws on an individual’s most deeply held thinking. This year (2015/16) is the first attempt at carrying out an evaluation exercise of this type. The paper reports on the preliminary results from the Autumn Term module

Researching student learning on business management degree courses: the problem of evaluation

The twenty first century has been a period of major change for business organisations and industries. This has led to an ever greater interest in and demand for managers with not only the traditional subject knowledge and technical skills but also individual business skills such as creativity, people skills, personal self- knowledge, managerial intuition and judgement. To meet these demands business schools are under pressure to innovate and adapt their courses appropriately. For an undergraduate degree in business management, this includes both the structure of the degree, the subject disciplines covered and the teaching methods used. But innovation poses a major challenge for researchers and teachers alike – how can the effect on student learning of an innovation be measured or assessed? For each new subject discipline and teaching method there are three critical issues – the quality of the delivery of the module, student response to the learning experience and the overall effect on student learning. A raft of student feedback methods using multiple channels of communication, have grown up in recent years, which set out to measure student satisfaction and student learning as well as the quality of the delivery of the module. This paper outlines the innovation challenge to business schools and describes the approach taken to evaluation on the newly designed set of first year modules for the Cass business management undergraduate degree

Addressing the challenge of building research capabilities in Business Management Undergraduate students

The research process is complex, involving many conceptually different steps that require a variety of skills. For instance, early on in the research process the task of identifying and articulating a suitable research problem often involves, amongst other skills, a high level of creativity and critical thinking, whereas later on in the process, application of a suitable research method would require deep knowledge of the state of art in that methodology. As the techniques used by researchers to iterate between current discipline theory, subject knowledge and research methodology gets increasingly specialized, it is also becoming more opaque to people outside the research community. Management students with little or no exposure to research find this puzzling because they are being encouraged to do something creative and original, and at the same time they are expected to build on existing knowledge using a set of conventions associated with the chosen methodology. Business students in their 1st year face many new situations. Most of them have little experience of what research is about or the various elements that are necessary for a successful project. The teaching at school level mostly focuses on imparting subject knowledge and instilling basic numeracy and literary skills. It does not prepare them so well for setting their own goals and working independently ‑ the core of research. Traditional teaching methods can help them acquire the relevant subject knowledge and basic research methods. But putting these together in a piece of practical research requires in depth understanding and creative thinking. Problem‑based learning (PBL) is a way to help UG students at the beginning of their research attempts to develop the mindset and skills needed. This paper makes the case for introducing Critical Thinking skills to Business Management students in their 1st year, using a problem‑based Learning (PBL) approach. It assesses what was involved in developing and delivering such a course. Both staff and students found the experience challenging, but the overall response was positive establishing that the approach taken was fundamentally effective

The challenge of introducing the subject of research and research methods to business undergraduates

The research process is complex, involving many conceptually different steps. The identification of a suitable problem can be a challenge involving a high level of creativity, whereas applying a chosen research method must follow accepted and well defined rules. How researchers iterate between current discipline theory, subject knowledge and research methodology is usually opaque to the outside researcher. Students with no exposure to research find this puzzling because they are being encouraged to do something creative and original, and at the same time to adopt clearly defined language and a set of conventions associated with the chosen methodology. Business students in their 1st year face many new situations. Most of them have little experience of what research is about or the various elements that are necessary for a successful project. The teaching at school level mostly focuses on imparting subject knowledge and instilling basic numeracy and literary skills. It does not prepare them so well for setting their own goals and working independently - the core of research. Traditional teaching methods can help them acquire the relevant subject knowledge and basic research methods. But putting these together in a piece of practical research requires in depth understanding and creative thinking. Problem-based learning (PBL) is a way to help UG students at the beginning of their research attempts to develop the mindset and skills needed. This paper makes the case for introducing Critical Thinking skills to Business Management students in their 1st year, using a problem-based Learning (PBL) approach

Paso del Norte Watershed Council Coordinated Water Resources Database Project

The Paso del Norte Watershed Council (PDNWC) is a quasi-governmental organization that serves in an advisory capacity to the New Mexico-Texas Water Commission regarding the selection, planning, and implementation of environmental enhancements and mitigations associated with the El Paso-Las Cruces Regional Sustainable Water Project. The Council recommends policies for cooperation, coordination, and the sharing of information concerning planning and management activities of projects affecting the Paso del Norte Watershed, this being defined as the Rio Grande Basin between Elephant Butte Dam/Reservoir in southern New Mexico and Fort Quitman, Texas. In the last several years, the Watershed Council has discussed the development of a regional cooperative database project that would provide streamlined access to a range of water resource data in the Paso del Norte region. In August of 2002, the El Paso Water Utilities provided initial funding to the Paso del Norte Watershed Council to develop a pilot cooperative database project, and efforts toward the development of such a project have been ongoing. This document is the final report for this effort. In this report, we detail the following elements of the project, as specified in the initial Scope of Work: 1. The background, motivation, and intended outcomes of the project, 2. The specific tasks that were undertaken in project development efforts, 3. The specific insights that we have gained in this pilot effort, 4. Specific recommendations for new water quality monitoring sites and equipment, and 5. An outline of tasks that should be undertaken in future phases of the project. All deliverables specified in the project have been completed, and we also note the following recommendations for future project work, as detailed in the latter part of this report: * Complete migration of the Project website and related databases to the ArcIMS software, * Installation of new monitoring stations and equipment as detailed above, and inclusion of these monitoring sites in future ArcIMS map products, * Enhanced levels of funding to be directed to support more active participation of regional volunteer data providers and to bring new providers into the project, * Exploration of scripting and automated FTP routines or a batch mode of data transfer to allow progress on the "user interface plateau" discussed in the report, * Inclusion of groundwater data into future phases of the project, * Linking the EPWU-funded project to USACE-supported database efforts, and * Additional funding to be provided to lend institutional support to the Watershed Council and also to fund future Cooperative Database Project activities

Evolution of the UV Excess in Early-Type Galaxies

We examine the UV emission from luminous early-type galaxies as a function of redshift. We perform a stacking analysis using Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) images of galaxies in the NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey (NDWFS) Bo\"otes field and examine the evolution in the UV colors of the average galaxy. Our sample, selected to have minimal ongoing star formation based on the optical to mid-IR SEDs of the galaxies, includes 1843 galaxies spanning the redshift range $0.05\leq z\leq0.65$. We find evidence that the strength of the UV excess decreases, on average, with redshift, and our measurements also show moderate disagreement with previous models of the UV excess. Our results show little evolution in the shape of the UV continuum with redshift, consistent either with the binary model for the formation of Extreme Horizontal Branch (EHB) stars or with no evolution in EHB morphology with look-back time. However, the binary formation model predicts that the strength of the UV excess should also be relatively constant, in contradiction with our measured results. Finally, we see no significant influence of a galaxy's environment on the strength of its UV excess.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures; accepted by ApJ. Modified from original version to reflect referee's comment

Worry and the inhibition of emotionally valanced stimuli in a directed forgetting paradigm

There is considerable evidence in support of an attentional bias among clinically anxious individuals for threatening stimuli. However, a similar bias is not usually found in non-clinical anxious individuals and neither population has tended to show a response bias for mood-congruent information. We proposed that the measurement of anxiety in normals has previously been flawed due to questionnaires which do not accurately select pathological worry, the cognitive component of anxiety. First, we administered the Penn State Worry Questionnaire and selected only those with the most extreme high and low scores. At the time of testing, these subjects were given a state anxiety measure. From these scores, the high and low state anxiety within trait anxiety subjects were selected. With this selection procedure, we compared all high state anxious individuals to all low state anxious individuals. Our hypothesis was that, we would find significant differences between the high and low state within trait groups in a Directed Forgetting Paradigm. Directed forgetting was observed as a function of state within trait and the valence of the word on recall. Word fragment also showed a directed forgetting effect but no differences were seen for the worry groups. However, a secondary recognition procedure on the completed word fragments showed a bias as a function of worry group. The results are interpreted to suggest that worry has an effect on the availability episodic memory

The association of preoperative cardiac stress testing with 30-day death and myocardial infarction among patients undergoing kidney transplantation

BACKGROUND:Although periodic cardiac stress testing is commonly used to screen patients on the waiting list for kidney transplantation for ischemic heart disease, there is little evidence to support this practice. We hypothesized that cardiac stress testing in the 18 months prior to kidney transplantation would not reduce postoperative death, total myocardial infarction (MI) or fatal MI. METHODS:Using the United States Renal Data System, we identified ESRD patients ≥40 years old with primary Medicare insurance who received their first kidney transplant between 7/1/2006 and 11/31/2013. Propensity matching created a 1:1 matched sample of patients with and without stress testing in the 18 months prior to kidney transplantation. The outcomes of interest were death, total (fatal and nonfatal) MI or fatal MI within 30 days of kidney transplantation. RESULTS:In the propensity-matched cohort of 17,304 patients, death within 30 days occurred in 72 of 8,652 (0.83%) patients who underwent stress testing and in 65 of 8,652 (0.75%) patients who did not (OR 1.07; 95% CI: 0.79-1.45; P = 0.66). MI within 30 days occurred in 339 (3.9%) patients who had a stress test and in 333 (3.8%) patients who did not (OR 1.03; 95% CI: 0.89-1.21; P = 0.68). Fatal MI occurred in 17 (0.20%) patients who underwent stress testing and 15 (0.17%) patients who did not (OR 0.97; 95% CI: 0.71-1.32; P = 0.84). CONCLUSION:Stress testing in the 18 months prior to kidney transplantation is not associated with a reduction in death, total MI or fatal MI within 30 days of kidney transplantation

Assessing the evolutionary potential of novel resistance elements to the candidate antibacterial, niclosamide

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