I was talking with Andrew when he happened to mention how many friends he has on Facebook (about 477 today).
And then today, I listened to the Manager Tools podcast of Facebook (and part 2).
It makes interesting listening. I suspect that many of our students would also find the ideas presented in the cast interesting too.
My Strategic Thinking class (MGMT 302) is going reasonably well.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of things that are noticeable in the class. Firstly, in the first class of the week--which is based on a test to motivate the students to read the text in a timely fashion--the students are reluctant to engage in conversation about the readings they have done. It's not clear to me why that is. At this stage my two hypotheses are:
Obviously, these are just guesses on my part. But why does it matter.
It matters, because experience tells me that if they engage in 30 minutes of discussion about the the readings the average class mark goes up: indeed most students do better as a result of such discussions (it's not just the less prepared learning more). Furthermore, talking about the readings helps to cement the 'information' and makes deeper connections about the material for them.
I think in class today, I'll try and engage them on this.
The second thing I've noticed is that there is little evidence, in the subsequent case discussions, that they have looked at the figures in any meaningful way (or looked at them at all). I might leave this issue for next week --- although I'll let them know that it can be a surefire way of bumping up one's grade in this course.
It's been a long time coming, but I finally got around to upgrading the version of MovableType that I use on this site.
It was as painless and problem free process that one could hope for. Just install the new files, copy over the configuration file, install the few plugins I use and voilá -- it was done. It probably took less than ten minutes (including reading the documentation).
I am currently involved with a class known as INTBUS 202: Foundations of strategy. The course is intended to get people experienced in using the main tools of strategy; such as SWOT, Porter's five forces, and so on.
As I've noted elsewhere (here, here, and a bit here), For me, one of the consequential overarching themes, is good judgement. Thus, participants in the course need to practice their judgement--and get feedback on it--so as to refine it.
One of the ways in which we (Dan Tisch and I) have students exercise their judgement is by getting them to "do" cases.
Today's case was Edward Marshall Boehm (that classic by "James Quinn"). I was really pleased at how the students handled the case and the quality of the contributions they made. I think after today's session they had a good understanding of the situation (the business, the industry, and the customers) facing the company. From that, I think they could then build a strong position as they addressed the somewhat conflicting goals presented by Edward and Helen.
What was nice was the people at the back of the class (often a quiet area) contributed. There was one woman who was able to bring in her own detailed knowledge of a similar situation here in New Zealand (Morris and James). I hope others in the class will take there cue from her, and bring their 'expert' knowledge to bear when they can.
Andrew is getting fit and I'm envious
Jaffa Pete is thought provoking
It seems that the UoA has moved its student email services over to Google's gmail service.
This means that all the old address (UPI@ec.auckland.ac.nz) will move to the new domain aucklanduni.ac.nz. No doubt this has been done to ease the redirection of mail, but it does complicate searching from mail from the university -- I used to just use site:auckland.ac.nz to get all UoA mail, but now that is broken.
Setting up Outlook to access gmail was relatively painless, except:
1. The instructions assumed a gmail addresses, e.g. UPI@googlemail.com, rather than UPI@aucklanduni.ac.nz, and
2. The SSL settings aren't fully specified in the instructions.
Aside from that, it was straight sailing.
As an aside, I wonder how long it will be fore some spammer tries to send mail to upi@aucklanduni.ac.nz
I've just received the (Student Evaluations of Teaching* or University Lecturing Questionnaire for INTBUS 202: Foundations of strategy.
Such evaluations have both supporters and detractors. Anyway, back to my results ...
The students seem to fall into three camps. First, there are those who liked what I did and marked me highly in all areas. This is typified by the student who said:
One of the best lecturers in my opinion. I came to university to learn and not to be taught or spoon-fed everything. His vast understanding across many areas prove useful and which I deem ought to be necessary for a paper of this calibre.
Secondly, there are those students who marked me down in all areas. The comments from those students are of the form:
Slides!!!
or
More structure
and
Did you talk about the course material? I might have missed it during your other insights
Finally, there are those students who had a more 'normal' distribution in their evaluation.
To some up; some students really liked what I did, some really disliked what I did, and a group were moderate in their opinions. The split is something like 10%, 30%, 60%.
So what do I take away from this, and what do I plan to change?
I think there was a gap between myself and many of the students. Despite both my comments and Dan's (the other person who taught this course), most of students didn't read the textbook ahead of the class. For Dan's sessions that didn't matter too much; but for my sessions, I relied on the fact that the student's had read the book--and I was unwilling to compromise on that. Without the background knowledge provided by the book, I can understand and believe that many of the students had a hard time following along with me. Thus, for many it would have felt unstructured. This would be especially so, given Dan's sessions that very heavily followed the book.
Was I unstructured? I don't think so. I had a very clear and detailed 'lesson plan' for each class. What I didn't provide is step-by-step slides. Could I do slides? Yes. Yet, as I pointed out to the students at the beginning of the course, the evidence is that providing slides detracts from students learning (even if they fell the opposite).
Having said all that, and re-read it, I sound defensive and perhaps I am.
The more I think about it, the more I regard the contrast between Dan's approach an my approach as being a challenge for the students. When I've co-taught with others (say Liliana Erakovic or Darl Kolb) my style has been close to the other teacher. Having said that, it doesn't mean my style is the same with both--Liliana's and my style is very different to that when I'm teaching with Darl. Dan and I are yet to find a common approach.
I think the new structure will help. Next semester, I imagine the general pattern will be:
(I'm haven't talked this through with Dan yet, so it will be intresting to get his comments)
At the end of the day, we want the students to be adept at using the tools of strategy (and not just one or two of them). And I think this will do it better than before.
I had coffee with a good colleague today. Richard Brookes is one of the superb teachers around here.
We got on to the topic of what managers really need to know and the issue of the relevancy of much management research.
As a result of our discussion, I've become even more convinced of the need to teach "judgement" in our MBA programmes. The challenge is that it's hard to do that.
I think in my next undergraduate class, that I'll see how much buy-in I can get from the students to such an assertion (and consequently, how much effort they'll put into developing better judgement).
I've decided to step down from my role in the GSE. It's a shame, because I enjoy it so much. However, there are so many competing demands for my time, that I can't give the GSE the attention it deserves.
Que sera.
So, once I'm back from the conference in Europe I'll return to my home department.
