My recent research has explored the contrasts between teaching using exclusively lectures and exams and teaching using experience associated with the material students are learning. This is important because I believe that students learn and remember what they do better than what they read, cram, and regurgitate on exams. I believe that students need to internalize what they are learning so that they will be able to apply this to their future lives and careers.

The broadest term for this is experiential learning. Governments globally have recognized that education should evolve to teach the skills and competencies students will need - in addition to teaching the basic academic content. Here are two examples:

1. Canada establishes a Pan Canadian Global Competencies Framework for Education: http://www.ibe.unesco.org/en/news/canada-establishes-pan-canadian-global-competencies-framework-education
2. 21st Century Competencies - Singapore Ministry of Education: https://www.moe.gov.sg/education-in-sg/21st-century-competencies

In 2021, McKinsey published an article listing 56 foundational skills students should develop to prepare for their lives and careers. The article, titled "McKinsey: These are the skills you will need for the future of work," is available online at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/defining-the-skills-citizens-will-need-in-the-future-world-of-work/. The introduction states:
"To future-proof citizens’ ability to work, they will require new skills—but which ones? A survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries suggests those that governments may wish to prioritize."

As a teacher, I continuously search for ways to help my students develop at least some of these skills while they are learning the academic material in my courses. Students whose prior education comprised almost exclusively lectures and exams become frustrated with the activities that require them to develop and employ these skills. By the end of a semester, some students finally get what they were doing and benefit from their work. Sadly, many students are so resistant that they don't understand. Yet all of these students will enter the workforce, where they will need these skills.

Understand why you teach the way you do so that you can explain it to your students.

Tell your students why you teach the way you do.

#ExperientialLearning #21stCenturyCompetencies #SoftSkills

My observation: The Wuhan Coronavirus and its Covid-19 illness are creating a watershed moment in how people meet, conduct business, and learn. I doubt we will return fully to prior behaviors after this settles.

Breaking News (from The Buffalo News)

"All state university campuses will shut down on March 19 to try to reduce density levels of students who could spread the novel coronavirus among people on and off college grounds.

"The remaining weeks of the spring semester for the 64-campus State University of New York will be offered through online course work, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said Wednesday afternoon.

"'That will be a way to reduce density and that’s a good thing,' Cuomo said.

"The order will also affect the City University of New York system."

https://buffalonews.com/2020/03/11/all-suny-cuny-schools-shifting-to-online-learning-to-combat-coronavirus/

#covid-19 #coronavirus #education #businessmeetings #travel #socialchange #onlinelearning #elearning

1880 Saigon Monopoly

In 2012, I brought four Monopoly games to Vietnam to use for leadership activities in my classes. The students played in teams, four teams per game. Each team selected a leader. Each leader had to use a difference leadership style; autocratic, consensus, laissez-faire, and democratic (i.e., voting on all decisions). The students later wrote about what it was like in their leadership style teams and what they thought about their experiences. At that time, I was warned that I could get in trouble having a Monopoly game in Vietnam.

Last year, I walked into a Ginko (made in Vietnam) store near my Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) hotel and to my surprise they had a Monopoly game on display at the front of the store - 1880 Saigon Monopoly. I returned later in the afternoon to purchase the beautifully designed game you see above.

The image below is a group of Keuka College business students playing during class to learn about leadership styles in 2013.

From Edutopia: "New Study Shows the Impact of PBL on Student Achievement."

My research interest, and my teaching, are in higher education. Edutopia generally publishes information for K-12 education, but I have found some of their posts to be insightful and relevant to higher education.

This new article might interest my academic and educator friends with an interest in experiential learning. "PBL" means Project-Based Learning (and sometimes it means Problem-Based Learning).

From the article:
"Researchers in Michigan show that project-based learning in high-poverty communities can produce statistically significant gains in social studies and informational reading."

Here is a link to the new post on Edutopia:
www.edutopia.org/article/new-study-shows-impact-pbl-student-achievement-nell-duke-anne-lise-halvorsen

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​My current Ph.D. research is deeply personal. I spent a year, from January 1969 until January 1970, in Pleiku, Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. Pleiku is in the Central Highlands, less than 50 miles from the Cambodian border. At the time, it sat squarely on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the major supply route for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) into the South, in support of NVA troops and the Vietcong. For about two decades, I had wanted to return. I saw the devastation we created during the war – to the countryside and to the lives of the people. I wanted to see how the Vietnamese were doing. In early 2012, I had an opportunity to travel to Hanoi, Vietnam, to teach business classes for seven weeks for Keuka College. I took that opportunity I have been teaching annually in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) since 2012. Finally, I had the opportunity to see Vietnam 40 years after the war, and to give something back to a new generation of Vietnamese business students.

Prior to starting to teach in 2012, I had spent 37 years in business. For most of those years, I was a senior marketing and sales executive, in Fortune 500 and global companies. Teach college business courses came naturally. I had mentored subordinates throughout my career. I had given dozens of business workshops, both in my salaried executive career, and as a consultant from 2001 through 2012.

My instinct, starting with the first Keuka College course I taught, which was a business leadership class, was to incorporate projects for the students that would enable them to apply what they were studying in lectures and in their textbook. After a year of teaching in Vietnam, I realized that I needed to gain a deeper understanding of the processes of teaching and learning, resulting in my enrollment in fall 2013 in the Curriculum, Instruction, and the Science of Learning Ph.D. program within the Graduate School of Business, State University of New York University at Buffalo. I was – and remain – driven to understand the variety of experiential or active learning processes through my Ph.D. studies and subsequent research.

The image below is a screen shot of a Google map showing the route to Cambodia from Pleiku, Vietnam.

If asked, I would suggest that a visit to a factory, where students could see examples of the processes about which they are learning, would count as experiential learning (or active learning, as it would be called here in Ho Chi Minh City). I also would admit to an argument that a visit of this type is really just an illustrated lecture. Still, I think that the students will remember what they saw - and experienced - better from the factory visit than from a lecture with photos.

I took my Keuka College Operation & Production Management students to visit the Yakult probiotic drink "factory" yesterday. Really, I would prefer to call it a production facility. It is clean, shiny, and highly automated. The students saw batch processing, which was the making of the probiotic "seed." They saw flow shop example, which was the continuous flow processing of the drink once the probiotic seed was created. They saw a very small number of people producing thousands of drinks per hour. We chatted about what they saw on the bus ride back to the university. I believe the students will remember this trip longer than they will remember the lecture on types of production processes.

The photo is with the students following the tour. Yakult does not permit photography within their production facility.