It’s Called a Lecture Theatre! Reflections on Large-Class Student Engagement

It’s called a lecture theatre! Reflections on large-class student engagement Rationale: Teacher enthusiasm and student engagement are key predictors of student motivation, successful learning and development of new knowledge (Patrick et al., 2000). Embedding creativity and innovation in the teaching experience is therefore critical to foster engagement and enhance acquisition of key learning outcomes. But, as Amabile famously argues in ‘How to kill creativity’ (1998), creativity is often seriously impeded in corporate and academic organisations in order to reinforce business imperatives such as productivity, uniformity of delivery of services, and control. Higher education is no exception: Walder (2015) identifies a number of barriers to innovation and, thereby, to student engagement in universities. Objectives: The aim of this presentation is to reflect on how university lecturers can generate student engagement in teacher-led, large-class teaching (i.e., classical lectures to 100+ students) where there is limited scope for group work and lively debate. The basic idea is to approach the lecture theatre as a theatre rather than a teaching room. The ideas and recommendations are based on critical reflection of the presenter’s student evaluations and a student council nomination for Most Innovative Teaching (2013). Findings: The storyline is likely the most important aspect to get right. Plays and movies are engaging because there is an evolving story, which makes the audience curious about what comes next. Lectures based on textbooks are often entirely predictable, because (i) the (good) student has already read the story/text, and (ii) the lecturer follows and repeats the textbook, perhaps even using the polished slides and cases that come with the textbook. The adoption of narrative models used in plays and movies can greatly enhance the structuring of the lecture material and prompt the lecturer to devise exercises or change style of presentation, which will generate attention and stimulate a sense of unpredictability. Activation of multiple senses is key to effective learning (Kátai et al., 2008). Audio material such as music is readily available and highly underutilised. By opening my large-class marketing lectures with themed music, I have managed to create a point of difference that sets the lectures apart in the student mind-set and gives the students a chance to settle down and tune in. Props are an effective way of embedding learning in tangible objects. Marketing teaching easily lends itself to the use of props (e.g., products), but all subject areas have an empirical field from which objects can be sourced and included in the teaching. The inclusion of props adds interest, breaks the flow of the story and provides a tangible hook, which connects theoretical learning with a relevant area of practise. Costumes are, of course, an inherent part of theatre and obviously available to lecturers. I do utilise this theatrical element, though as subtle as I can. By making conscious changes to what I wear when lecturing, I try to emphasise certain themes or instil a certain attitude towards a particular subject. Key barriers to innovation and student engagement in large-class teaching are addressed (Cachia et al., 2010; Hockings 2005; Walder 2015)

Autonomy as license to operate: establishing the internal and external conditions of informed choice in marketing

The assumption that consumers voluntarily accept or decline marketing offerings provides the ethical justification that gives marketing as a social system its license to operate. Consumer autonomy is, therefore, the key ethical principle of marketing in capitalistic economies. However, even in domains with extensive regulatory frameworks and advanced market conditions, consumers are often ill-informed or underinformed. The resultant lack of epistemic confidence diminishes consumers’ ability to make informed choices. At the same time, consumers are by default exposed to promotional content designed to persuade them to accept marketing offerings. This threatens personal autonomy. We develop a concept of consumer autonomy which marketing regulations should protect and promote to enhance informed decision-making. We design autonomy to be robust in situations where individuals are exposed to persuasive attempts to influence them to choose a specific course of action. As such, our concept of autonomy is applicable to a range of contexts beyond marketing where it is necessary to balance external influences and individual autonomy

Globally European: reflections on EMJ from the incoming Editor-in-Chief

No abstract available

Corporate democratic nation-building: Reflections on the constructive role of businesses in fostering global democracy

Europe finds itself in a challenging situation dominated by economic and political uncertainty, which has deep ramifications for businesses and society. The Brexit vote for the UK to leave the EU has caused a political crisis, which raises fundamental questions about the founding mission of the EU as a largescale nation-building experiment aiming at promoting democracy, peace and prosperity across Europe through an “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”. This Reflection on Europe argues that Europe needs to establish a new democratic equilibrium and that businesses can play a fundamental constructive role to achieve this new equilibrium by actively designing core internal and external business activities to be conducive to key enabling conditions of democracy

Cost-of-Living Crisis:Consumer Resilience and Stakeholder Interventions

The main aim of this project was to explore consumer resilience during the cost-of-living crisis and the scope for various stakeholders to co-create solutions to help consumers cope with the crisis. A cost-of-living crisis occurs when disposable incomes in a significant number of households are no longer sufficient to cover essential needs for food, heating, transportation and a minimum level of leisure activity. Scotland, and indeed the rest of the UK, is currently experiencing an enduring cost of-living crisis which started in 2021 when a rapid rise in inflation caused prices on food, energy and other essentials to rise dramatically. Within the span of just one year, consumer price inflation increased by more than 10%. Whilst inflation is currently falling, it would be ill-informed to draw the conclusion that we are no longer in a cost-of-living crisis

Cost-of-Living Crisis:Consumer Resilience and Stakeholder Interventions

The main aim of this project was to explore consumer resilience during the cost-of-living crisis and the scope for various stakeholders to co-create solutions to help consumers cope with the crisis. A cost-of-living crisis occurs when disposable incomes in a significant number of households are no longer sufficient to cover essential needs for food, heating, transportation and a minimum level of leisure activity. Scotland, and indeed the rest of the UK, is currently experiencing an enduring cost of-living crisis which started in 2021 when a rapid rise in inflation caused prices on food, energy and other essentials to rise dramatically. Within the span of just one year, consumer price inflation increased by more than 10%. Whilst inflation is currently falling, it would be ill-informed to draw the conclusion that we are no longer in a cost-of-living crisis

Alcohol advertising: the last chance saloon

Research has established that alcohol advertising,1-3 like that for tobacco4 and fast food,5-7 influences behaviour. It encourages young people to drink alcohol sooner and in greater quantities. From a public health perspective, advertising of alcohol should clearly be limited. The United Kingdom has opted for a system of self regulatory controls that focuses primarily on the content of advertisements, with some limitations on the channels that can be used. This is overseen by the Advertising Standards Authority, through the Committee of Advertising Practice, which represents the interests of advertisers, agencies, and media owners.As part of its alcohol inquiry, the House of Commons health select committee wanted to explore the success of self regulation. It obtained a large number of internal marketing documents from alcohol producers and their communications agencies in order to examine the thinking and strategic planning that underpin alcohol advertising and hence show not just what advertisers are saying, but why they are saying it. Here we present the key insights to emerge

Ultracold quantum gases in one-dimensional optical lattice potentials : nonlinear matter wave dynamics

In this thesis I report on experiments on the quantum dynamics of matter waves in a onedimensional lattice potential. A 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensates is prepared in a one-dimensional waveguide in the lowest band of a superimposed optical lattice potential. The action of a weak lattice potential allows to modify the linear wave dispersion. We realized dispersion management by switching from normal to anomalous dispersion during the evolution. In this way the initial expansion of a wave packet is reversed to a compression and thus the effective spreading can be suppressed. By preparing a BEC at the Brillouin zone edge, we observed bright atomic gap solitons – non-spreading wave packets. They form, if the atom number and the lattice potential depth is tuned such that the effect of the repulsive atomic interaction and the anomalous dispersion cancel. For deep lattice potentials our system is described by a discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation, whose dynamics is determined by the tunneling between adjacent lattice sites and the nonlinear phase evolution. In the main part of this thesis I report on the first experimental observation of nonlinear self-trapping for matter waves. The transition from the diffusive regime, characterized by an continuous expansion of the condensate, to the self-trapping regime is accomplished by increasing the atomic density. Due to the corresponding increase of the repulsive atomic interaction the initial expansion stops and the width of the wave packet remains finite. The comparison with a numerical analysis reveals that the effect is due to an inhibition of the site-to-site tunneling induced by the nonlinear phase evolution