The European Undergraduate Research-Oriented Participatory Education (EU-ROPE) At Copenhagen Business School

While the knowledge management literature has addressed the explicit and tacit skills needed for successful performance in the modern enterprise, little attention has been paid to date in this particular literature as to how these wide-ranging skills may be suitably acquired during the course of an undergraduate business school education. This paper presents case analysis of the research-oriented participatory education curriculum developed at Copenhagen Business School because it appears uniquely suited, by a curious mix of Danish education tradition and deliberate innovation, to offer an educational experience more empowering of essential tacit knowledge skills than that found in educational institutions in other national settings. We specify the program forms and procedures for consensus-based governance and group work (as benchmarks) that demonstrably instruct undergraduates in the tacit skill dimensions of knowledge thought to be essential for success following graduation

Undergraduate Synopsis-based Oral Examinations at a Scandinavian Business School

We report a local or regional undergraduate examination form – the synopsis-based oral examination (S-BOE), as it is deployed in both large and small international management education programs at a Scandinavian business school. The S-BOE format is designed to assess student cognitive achievement in light of specified learning objectives through a focused presentation and dialogue involving an examiner and qualified censor, the latter being formally present to ensure process fairness for both examiner and student. It affords the examiner and censor the opportunity to explore student cognitive skills over the known range: unistructural > multistructural > relational > extended abstract (Biggs, J. 1999). Individuals as well as student project groups may be assessed using this approach. Administrative costs do not significantly exceed that of other course assessment formats: written reports or in-class group examinations. There are also interesting learning efficiencies; practitioner experience, reflection, and dialogue with students suggest that all students experience this examination format as a learning experience in itself, over a range of course-related knowledge issues and interpersonal skilling. Exemplary students manifest “dramatic knowledge” in those instances when they creatively display a comprehensive, reflective, and reflexive understanding of course material in presentation and subsequent intersubjective dialogue. The authors discuss important features of this undergraduate examination format that remain largely overlooked and under-appreciated in terms that regionally and locally contextualize international accreditation standards and process. At a time when economic, efficiency, and standardization concerns increasingly pressure educational institutions to adopt testing methods that are psychologically “distant” in respect to the instructor-student relationship, the synopsis-based oral examination is an interesting alternative suitable for small as well as large academic programs

European Undergraduate - Research Oriented Participatory Education (EU-ROPE, 2) At a Danish Business School: Education Policy, Administrative Practice, and Survey Data on Project Advisor Qualifications and Preferences

This paper was composed in the fall of 2007. It was then presented on 17 November 2007 at the Matchpoints Conference at the University of Århus, a conference jointly sponsored by the Irish Embassy to Denmark and the University of Århus. We subsequently presented the paper to an internal IKL session of colleagues involved in educational research (dubbed, the "Educational Irregulars’) and then offered the paper to an internal seminar of the Asian Research Center. Throughout this process, Maribel Blasco has been particularly helpful as a colleague with knowledge and interest in the role, nature, and politics of tertiary education. We learned through this process that our Working Paper is at least four separate research journal pieces – in potential. Thus, we file this as a record of a work in progress and as a follow up to the previously filed Working Paper we now refer to as the "EU-ROPE 1” paper – our first venture into exploring the educational character and implications of the CBS SPRØK undergraduate educational model