Context and Pedagogy: A Quarter-Century of Change in an Introductory Management Course

Management faculty members have had a longstanding interest in the design of the Introduction to Management Course as it presents an opportune point to provide students with the foundational skills for success in their Management Studies. Since many Management majors take these courses during their freshman year in the university, the courses are, intentionally or not, also settings for helping students transition to the university both academically and socially. This paper reports on a study of the 4-year outcomes associated with this potential of Introduction to Management courses to help with students’ transition into university-level studies. Specifically, it contrasts 4-year graduation outcomes among three different Introduction to Management courses taken by a freshman business student cohort of a large, public, university. The study results show a course that focused on life skill building was associated with better 4-year graduation outcomes than theory-driven and business overview classes. Contrary to expectations, the study indicated that there were no significant differences among students enrolled in the classes in terms of other important student characteristics known to impact graduation rates, including underrepresented minority (URM) and first-generation status, SAT or ACT scores, self-reported GPA, and exposure to university-level URM student success and achievement programs.

Section: Literature Review and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting 4 Year Outcomes Associated With Introduction to Management Courses

Roldan

2021

“…The course has standardized learning objectives, but faculty delivered that content with their unique personalities and methods. For student learning to be “meaningful, and responsive to the uncertain,” our faculty believed their unique styles reflected the changing nature of businesses (Hendry, Hiller, Martin, & Boyd, 2017, p. 346). They valued autonomy to express different expertise and styles through different textbooks, assignments, and grading policies.…”

Section: Instructional Change In Context: Identifying and Understandimentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying Theory to Practice: Implementing a Live Case Competition in a Capstone Strategic Management Course

Lebron

Brannon

Sanford

et al. 2019

When facilitating large-scale instructional change, leaders face stakeholder tensions that arise from different institutional pressures. Over the past 4 years, we have created an innovative live case competition in a strategic management course as our college’s signature undergraduate experiential learning opportunity. This case has integrated the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business’ (AACSB) business knowledge and skill areas with grounded learning elements and course learning objectives. Each semester, over 350 students apply strategy concepts to analyze challenges provided by a local company. Course section winners present to executive judges in the final competition. We contribute to the literature by describing the live case competition created from a six-step collaborative process that managed stakeholder tensions as institutional pressures changed. Using distributed leadership and information-sharing approaches, our collaboration model helped us address different needs, share resources, adapt to institutional pressures and create sustainable experiential learning opportunities. With shared decision making and constructive dialogue, we developed high-quality student learning experiences that respected faculty autonomy, addressed resource limitations, and institutionalized business partnerships. We describe our motivation, context, and key stakeholders’ (faculty, students, executives, and administrators) challenges and solutions. We hope our collaborative model helps others successfully implement large-scale instructional change.

“…This criticism is most prevalent in undergraduate teaching compared to MBA and executive teaching, where an instructor may be able to facilitate vigorous discussion among managers and executives in the context of a focal case (Garvin, 2007). In comparison, undergraduate students, who tend to lack confidence and business experience especially early in their degree programs (Hendry et al, 2017), and students from non-Western cultures (Becheikh et al, 2022) often struggle to make connections between management theory and practice when cases are taught using instructor-centric Socratic methods (Lundberg & Winn, 2005). This has prompted calls for the use of theory in the case method to be rejuvenated (Bridgman et al, 2018) and for the development of student-centric instructional innovations for teaching cases (Desiraju & Gopinath, 2001; Lebron et al, 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Instructional Innovation That Embeds Group Learning in Case Teaching: The Table Case Method

Wright,

Irving,

Pereira

et al. 2023

Although combining case study teaching with group learning is a popular approach for teaching business courses, pedagogical challenges arise, particularly in undergraduate classes. To address these challenges, we developed an instructional innovation called the Team- Based Learning and Evaluation (TaBLE) Case Method, which increased student engagement and deepened learning in an undergraduate introductory management course. The TaBLE Case Method is built upon specific principles of team-based learning, and comprises phases that meld together individual preparation and group participation before, during and after class. Our evaluation of the TaBLE Case Method highlights how it enhances group learning by: increasing student motivation to prepare, attend and engage; creating individual accountability for group goals; fostering critical thinking and creative debate; and making theory-practice links more visible. We also discuss the method’s “shadowsides” and limitations, and provide guidance on how the method can be adapted for a variety of class sizes and delivery modes.