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

Reflection-in-addition: using reflective logs to build research into undergraduate projects

This paper explores the scope for using reflective logs as a component in final year projects taken by students on an undergraduate management course. Students often wish to build practical experience into the final year of their degree, but th ey are also expected to carry out a certain amount of independent research as part of a final year. There can be a tension between students⠒ desire for experience and the requirement for research. The context of this is a management degree where a sig nificant piece of independent work is regarded as a crucial component of the course, but where an unintended consequence of framing this piece of work in a way that encourages autonomy among students, is that there is some ambiguity about quite what stude nts are expected to deliver. An observation made by some of the markers of these projects is that it is not uncommon for them to read like good consultancy reports, which do demonstrate the students⠒ writing skills and often prepare them for their futu re careers, but which do not necessarily score highly against the criteria associated with a major academic piece of work. Within the author⠒s institution some thought has been given to providing alternative forms of project, and a tangible move in this direction has been to introduce an option where some students combine their project with working alongside an organisation on a practical task. For these students an integral part of the process is the requirement that they maintain a reflective log on their work, following the principles of Schon (1983) in framing and reframing questions to elicit knowledge based on the students⠒ experience. One interpretation of this is that the reflective log can constitute part of the primary data that the stud ents draw on in their research. Such an approach has clear attractions for students and academic supervisors alike. There are well defined formats which a reflective log can follow and which can foster experiential learning (Moon, 2004). Because this type of project is based on practical activitie

Learning Research Methods: How Personalised Should we be?

Much recent discussion in higher education has focused on the scope that exists to provide personalisation to students. This influences a range of factors, spanning the expectations that students have of the learning environment, the styles and methods used by lecturers, the need to deliver very specialist material to students, and the type of technological infrastructure that is adopted to support learning. For example, some viewpoints suggest that electronic resources to support learning should be delivered through a ‘personal learning environment’, as distinct from the currently familiar ‘virtual learning environment’, the implication being that personalisation is built into the learning environment as a core component. For teaching research methods, a personalised approach is attractive because students can be expected to vary in what approaches to research they are likely to use in other areas of their studies. Typically students want to make clear choices about exactly what research methods they learn. Furthermore there are particular variations in the extent to which students already have some experience of conducting their own research, and in the ease with which student are likely to adapt to a research mindset where they can deal with the demands of independent inquiry. For many students research is an individual pursuit, and indeed for students on undergraduate or taught postgraduate courses which include a major project, a piece of independent research is the most significant item of individual work within their course. Therefore this paper raises the question of whether research training needs to be as personalised as research itself. If it appropriate to prepare students for a major piece of research, where they will be choosing their own research methods, through a didactic course which covers a standard range of methods? Is it - in fact - essential that students are exposed to a wide range of research methods including those that they have no intention of ever using? The need to provide a range of skills and knowledge, and the possibilities to adapt this to students’ requirements, constitute only one facet of personalisation. Another is the ability to adjust material to differing prior levels of expertise, and to help students in finding the most effective path to achieve the necessary learning. While students are unlikely to enter higher education with any significant exposure to academic research methods, some of them will have carried out activities that have resonances with the research process. So there is considerable scope for inviting students to identify the most appropriate level at which to start learning research techniques. The intention is to identify some general principles for the personalisation of research methods learning and to discuss in what circumstances these might be relevant

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

Pedagogy and Evaluation: The Challenge for Business and Management Degree Courses in the 21st Century

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.To meet these demands business schools are under pressure to adapt their courses appropriately and to innovate. For an undergraduate degree in business management, this includes both the structure of the degree, the subjects covered, the teaching methods used and the whole student learning experience. But innovation poses a major challenge for researchers and teachers alike – how can the effect of an innovation be measured or assessed?This paper assesses the current state of evaluation methods applied in Business Schools. Student feedback has emerged as the dominant approach, but application is still at a fairly basic level. A case example of evaluating the new first year redesign of the business management degree at City’s Business School is used to illustrate the practical issues involved. Student feedback offers some indication of the success of the redesigned degree, but it does not entail any constructive dialogue between students and lecturers, and students often lack the skills to frame feedback constructively. The paper discusses the implications of changes in the business context for the evaluation methods used in Business Schools

Minimal model of strategy switching in the plus-maze navigation task

International audiencePrefrontal cortex (PFC) has been implicated in the ability to switch behavioral strategies in response to changes in reward contingencies. A recent experimental study has shown that separate subpopulations of neurons in the prefrontal cortex were activated when rats switched between allocentric place strategies and egocentric response strategies in the plus maze. In this paper we propose a simple neural-network model of strategy switching, in which the learning of the two strategies as well as learning to select between those strategies is governed by the same temporal-difference (TD) learning algorithm. We show that the model reproduces the experimental data on both behavioral and neural levels. On the basis of our results we derive testable prediction concerning a spatial dynamics of the phasic dopamine signal in the PFC, which is thought to encode reward-prediction error in the TD-learning theory

Взаємозв’язок великих кондратьєвських циклів розвитку економіки і системних світових конфліктів

Однією з найважливіших проблем, що постала перед сучасною наукою у зв’язку із стрімким розгортанням глобальної економічної кризи, загостренням світових конфліктів, є вироблення науково обґрунтованих «метричних» експрес прогнозів розвитку суспільства на ближчу і далеку перспективу

A Literature Review on Cloud Computing Adoption Issues in Enterprises

Part 3: Creating Value through ApplicationsInternational audienceCloud computing has received increasing interest from enterprises since its inception. With its innovative information technology (IT) services delivery model, cloud computing could add technical and strategic business value to enterprises. However, cloud computing poses highly concerning internal (e.g., Top management and experience) and external issues (e.g., regulations and standards). This paper presents a systematic literature review to explore the current key issues related to cloud computing adoption. This is achieved by reviewing 51 articles published about cloud computing adoption. Using the grounded theory approach, articles are classified into eight main categories: internal, external, evaluation, proof of concept, adoption decision, implementation and integration, IT governance, and confirmation. Then, the eight categories are divided into two abstract categories: cloud computing adoption factors and processes, where the former affects the latter. The results of this review indicate that enterprises face serious issues before they decide to adopt cloud computing. Based on the findings, the paper provides a future information systems (IS) research agenda to explore the previously under-investigated areas regarding cloud computing adoption factors and processes. This paper calls for further theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to the research area of cloud computing adoption by enterprises