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"Our education system is losing relevance. Here's how to unleash its potential"

4/17/2020

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The headline is from this article at the World Economic Forum:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/our-education-system-is-losing-relevance-heres-how-to-update-it/

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic instantly changed the ways we teach and the ways students learn. Except for those of us who already were teaching fully online courses, this was hugely disruptive. In my case, I was teaching a Master's-level fully online course for students at Daemen College, Buffalo, NY, and three fully seated undergraduate courses for University of North Carolina Asheville (UNC Asheville).

The online students had established their pace and were doing fine before Daemen College halted all seated classes. Nevertheless, I realized that some of those students would have had seated classes abruptly converted to online. I had to think about how this might affect them - not to mention how the stress, economic impact, and fear, caused by the pandemic was affecting their lives. The semester is ongoing, and the students seem to be OK. The end-of-semester student evaluations of my teaching will give me some ideas for improvement. We might have to teach fully online during the fall 2020 semester, and the feedback can help me adjust my methods to improve the students' learning experiences.

The fully seated students in my three UNC Asheville courses had the biggest shock - the shock millions of students in the U.S.A. and other countries experienced when their school shut the classrooms (and dormitories) and everything went virtual. Because I use team-based project-based-learning methods, the students were able to continue working in teams using whatever collaboration methods (i.e., Google Hangouts, Zoom, FaceTime, etc.) worked for them. I meet with these students weekly in 20-30 live online meetings. After a full-class live session, we break into team groups on Zoom and I meet with each group. To my surprise, I am having more direct interaction with my students in these courses than I had before we moved to online education. They are comfortable talking one-on-one and in small groups online - much more than in the classroom.

This is the time for us as educators to think seriously about how we teach and how students learn. The World Economic Forum article provides ideas to start our reflection.

#daemencollege #uncasheville #highereducation #experientiallearning #onlinelearning #pedagogy

Photo by Paul McAfee @ UNC Asheville with the students and a guest speaker, 2020.

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Business Strategy Simulation

7/13/2019

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Since 2012, I have taught the capstone Strategic Management course in the following institutions:
  1. Keuka College, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2016)
  2. University at Buffalo School of Management in Singapore (2016-2019)
  3. University at Buffalo School of Management in Buffalo (2016-2019)
  4. Canisius College in Buffalo, in both the undergraduate and MBA capstone courses (2019).​
Teaching in three countries at four campuses, has helped me develop the use of the Business Strategy Game simulation (https://www.bsg-online.com/) into the undergraduate capstone courses.
The students make 57 decisions weekly for each year of the simulation, covering business operations in the following areas:
  1. ​Corporate social responsibility and citizenship (up to 8 decision entries).
  2. Production operations (up to 11 decision entries per production facility, with a maximum of 4 plants).
  3. The addition of facility space, equipment, and production improvement options (up to 8 decision entries per production facility).
  4. Worker compensation and training (up to 6 decision entries per production facility).
  5. Shipping and distribution center operations (up to 5 decision entries per geographic region).
  6. Pricing and marketing (up to 9 decision entries in each of 4 geographic regions).
  7. Offers to sign celebrities (2 decision entries per offer).
  8. Financing of company operations (up to 8 decision entries).
Each week represents a year of business operations in a global shoe industry. The students are divided into teams, with each team representing one international shoe company, and the entire class represents the worldwide industry. The teams compete with each other.
Students approach the simulation in one of two ways. The majority of the students see it as a game and simply guess. A few student teams realize that this is their opportunity to apply their undergraduate studies into one course, using the skills they have gained from their business education to make holistic decisions in competition with the other teams (companies). It is these few groups of students who learn the most from this simulation.
This is an example of Project-Based Learning. The students learn from experience. They analyze their strategic positions, make decisions weekly, and then see the results of their decisions on Monday mornings.
After graduation, students have contacted me after job interviews to tell me that when they explained their work in the simulation, the interview took notice, exploring in greater depth what they had done and learned. These students tell me that their experience, and discussing it with interviewers, has helped them stand out from other candidates, and in some instances, get jobs.
I'm about to start two new sections of Strategic Management at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. With my own learning experiences from using the simulation, I hope these two capstone sections to be the most productive for the students ever. I'll report back at the end of the coming fall semester.
#project-based learning #experientiallearning #businessstrategygame #bsg #unca #uncAsheville #universityofnorthcarolinaatasheville
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10 predictions for the global economy in 2019

1/11/2019

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Downloaded from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/what-to-expect-for-the-global-economy-in-2019/
"What to expect for the global economy in 2019"
World Economic Forum, January 11, 2019

I am preparing course content for five college business sections that I'll teach this spring semester, starting this coming Monday. Two sections' subjects are undergraduate strategic management. One section's subject is graduate strategic management. The two remaining graduate sections are regional business in the pacific rim and a section on the global competitive framework. 

There is so much going on globally, both politically and economically, that we will never be at a loss for current news to support and illustrate the material we are studying. I just added this World Economic Forum summary article to the required reading for all five courses.

The article is available on the World Economic Forum website at:

www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/what-to-expect-for-the-global-economy-in-2019/

#iloveteaching #strategicmanagement #realeconomicnews #universityatbuffalo #canisiuscollege #daemencollege
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    Paul McAfee

    My experiential learning Activities blog includes examples from my international teaching experiences. The Research blog includes studies I have read and comments on others' research, as well as my own.

    Read about examples from my teaching college business courses in China, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam, relating to both experiential learning and project-based learning.

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