Students & Learners: a Conceptual Distinction To Share During First Class Sessions

Abstract

The initial class meeting of a course often sets the tone and should prefigure the &dquo;learning culture&dquo; that the professor desires to establish in the course. The learning culture required for success in many management and organizational behavior courses is based on participants engaging in experientially based learning. For some students, this presents an unconventional learning atmosphere. OB and management teachers who want to help students assimilate the potentially foreign learning expectations of such a course, must carefully consider how to structure the opening class exercise.One approach common to opening class sessions is sharing expectations. Pedagogies for doing this range from more traditional methods (e.g., reviewing the syllabus; answering questions) to more experientially based approaches such as using one of a number of &dquo;ice-breaker&dquo; exercises (such as Interviewing The Professor developed by Willits and Kindler). Regardless of pedagogy this common approach addresses student questions about evaluation, textbooks, course requirements, office hours, and other course related issues. The more experientially oriented first sessions often have an additional benefit of socializing students to small group activities; however, they possess one common shortcoming. They fail to explicitly alert students to the specific differences in attitude and behavior that will be required in the OB or management class.To address this problem, we have modified and adapted a conceptual framework originally developed for hearing persons who were learning sign language to communicate with the hearing impaired. The framework explicates differences between a student and a learner. We discuss this distinction extensively during the first class session of our course. We use it as a means of making transparent the distinctions between the &dquo;student culture&dquo; into which many of our participants have been previously socialized and the &dquo;learning community&dquo; we hope to foster in this course. In explaining this student vs. learner framework, we emphasize how a learner's approach to a course differs in terms of motivation, behaviors and attitudes.

Student Development and Classroom Participation: a Way out of the Gulag

“…In fact, many of the groups that do have the opportunity to &dquo;throw for 60&dquo; deliberately miss the dart board, thus signalling that as learners, rather than as students, they embrace the challenge before them (Serey & Verderber 1989). This &dquo;macho&dquo;2 behavior is usually greeted with hoots, jeers, and much stomping of feet; the class atmosphere is fully charged.…”