Teacher or student? Yes.

Some teaching opportunities benefit the instructor as well as the students.  The three years (seven semesters) teaching this one one course have challenged me to be a better teacher, as well as a better person. I'm looking forward to new classes I'll be teaching in the fall, but the students who've been a part of this very hands-on course have a special place in my heart.

Asked to teach this course three times before I reluctantly agreed, my reasons for refusing were that I'm not a sales person (at all) nor an alumna (the target market). When I finally said "yes", I had no idea how much the hybrid business-class model would be challenging, energizing, frustrating, and addicting

The students really do manage every aspect of an ongoing small business. This is both the good news and the bad news, as typically 50% of the students leave each semester (by design) and the compression of the learning is intense. Some of the unique features of this type of course:

• The business oversight requires experience that few faculty possess. 
• The academic responsibilities require experience that few business owners or entrepreneurs possess. 
• Implementation of entrepreneurial vision is limited by the semester calendar, which also creates operational challenges (students cannot be held responsible for the business when they are not enrolled). 
• The existence of a not-for-profit corporate structure within a state-funded entity to allow students to run a retail business creates complexity and challenge in accounting, procurement, payment (to vendors), student travel, and business operations. 
• Continuity of processes and institutional memory are ongoing challenges. Though the class has been in existence in various formats for 16 years, the processes, product portfolio, and supplier relationships change quickly enough (sometimes through entropy; sometimes due to turnover) for the current class to be both markedly different from and very similar to those of just five years ago. 
• Entrepreneurs do not generally travel in packs and star performers (independent contributors) may create management challenges (for their peers) in a venture where collaboration is required for success. 
• Students who have 4.0 grade point averages have “aha” moments of realizing they may have learned less than they realized in many of their courses. It is common to hear “Yes, we studied that, but I didn’t really get it until just now.” 
• Students seem to blossom, mature, gain confidence and get it almost overnight. It’s as though a switch is flipped, a neural circuit fires, or they complete a rite of passage that separates them from peers. 
• Employers recruit students from this program because of the nature of the program.
• Former students who are recognized across the state (and sometimes across the country) for professional accomplishments credit this program with as being pivotal to their success.

This has been one of my most challenging adventures. I’m going to miss it. But I have every confidence that the river will continue to flow.

Both sides of the coin

Perhaps the corollary to taking a risk for the fun and/or the learning is that success is often met with anger and suspicion.  Human nature lives on both sides of the coin.

The team that took the big risk yesterday reaped a big win.  The first email from a student on another team arrived 30 minutes after the simulation results were posted; that email simply requested a meeting about "some simulation questions."  The next email arrived before noon and contained accusations of "unethical practices."  The correspondents are on the same team and they have concerns...about their grade, mostly, and any negative impact as a result of a competing team's success.

The phrase that concerns me the most is this one: "this jump in success is not realistic in a simulation (or the real business environment)."  Oh, but the success is realistic.  A team or a company can take an enormous risk, combining some hard-won knowledge, a bit of courage, and what can only be called luck.  There will be criticism from stockholders, customers, and employees when it goes badly.  There will be accusations from competitors when it goes well.

It will be interesting to see which students analyze this success in order to learn and emulate...and which respond with anger and suspicion.  Student frustration yields another teaching opportunity, just as soon as cooler heads prevail.

Ancient history, scholarship, and deja vu

I find myself in the oddest--and most unexpected--places, of late, at least as far as my reading material.  A student sent me an article from The Journal of Higher Education (and how cool is it that a student reads the Journal?) on the use of technology in teaching; I wound up reading the referenced essay by David Pace on the history and scholarship of teaching and learning history.  And that essay from The American Historical Review is absolutely worth the effort to read and evaluate critically.

The essay begins and ends with the contrast in colleges and universities, "between the amateurism that we accept in our knowledge about teaching and the professionalism we demand in other aspects of our work."  It's not a secret that the rigor demanded of researchers is not expected of teachers, for reasons we love to debate ad nauseum, including the ubiquitous recognition and reward structure biased toward publication (regardless of value, whether to the classroom or to the community).  But lost in academic posturing and debate is the informed discussion of what makes good teaching:  

• How do we measure good teaching?  
• How do we teach the art and science of good teaching?  
• Shouldn't those questions--and their answers--inform not only how we teach but also what we teach?

The academic equivalent of throwing money at a problem is developing and teaching courses designed to address specific needs.  We create courses and assignments to teach collaboration, teamwork, ethics, diversity, and a host of other Real World Problems so that we can

teach students to evaluate claims critically, to see complex questions from more than one perspective, to understand how different groups can view the same situation in different ways, to recognize the long-term consequences of actions, and to master dozens of other subtle mental operations that are absolutely necessary for their success as individuals and for the very survival of our society.

And the method Pace proposes to teach those things?  It's history. But history taught well, informed by rigor, based upon proven methods, and shared in forums traditionally reserved for scholarly research.  Just imagine...

Are we taking the harder right?

"Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won."  This quote from the USMA Cadet Prayer kept playing in my head after reading student responses to Employers Want 18th-Century Skills. 

Today, I'll let the student voices stand alone; they really don't need any help from me.

Senior finance major.  The comments posted at the end of this article are the perfect example of the problems inherent to this country’s educational system. The writer of the article used a title that he did not fully clarify within his writing and instead of having an intelligent discussion about how to improve education, the entire conversation is about what is meant by the title.

In my personal opinion, colleges should be a place of elitism. It is hard to go to college. It is expensive, it is hard work and it should not be a vo-tech school. You should be forced to read classical literature, forced to learn a second language, basic math in college should be calculus and a semester of study abroad should be required. You should work hard to get a college degree and it should give each student a general knowledge of all subjects.

Senior management major.  This is the problem in Japan too. Many people are good at doing what they are told to do. That is, they have problem-solving ability. However, they are not good at thinking critically and voluntarily; they don't have problem-seeking ability.

Senior finance major.  I agree with Mark when he states that businesses are looking for employees who can both write and communicate clearly. Let’s face it. Who wants someone who has to have someone revise and edit their e-mail before they send it out to their superiors or colleagues? Secondly, who would want someone who goes around the office speaking the language of SMS, using lols, and omgs? Furthermore, to comment on the tangents being produced throughout the comments about punctuation, and grammar, most of these were minor errors. But, I do have one question. With all the elaborate word usage and detailed demonstrations put into written words in each comment…would you honestly forgo your literacy training in college for a technology skill to be taken in its place?

I can work with anyone....except her

I've written before about grades and the unintended consequences of placing too much emphasis on GPA.  At our career center (I shudder even to write this), students are instructed to place GPA at the top of their resume.  Little wonder, then, that grades loom large here.  And yet, employers continue to take a much broader view of potential candidates, as illustrated by CNN's recent Top 10 reasons employers want to hire you, where good cultural fit (described as being able to adapt) and ability to work with others are two of the 10.

The course I'm currently teaching has, by design, both individual work and teamwork as part of a student's grade.  The biggest complaint about the teamwork is that they lose control over the quality of the work; thus, teamwork may cause their grade to suffer.  The most popular solution offered by the students?  Don't make us work in teams.  And, if you're going to force us to work in teams, don't make us work with people we don't like or who aren't as smart as we are.

I've been incredulous listening to students explain how The Real World doesn't work this way, that they will be able to control their own destiny when they get a job, and that I simply do not understand how unfair it is to have others negatively impact ones work.  My internal response is roughly, "O, really? You seriously think my reputation is not affected by the professors you label as uncaring and incompetent?  By the anonymous feedback provided through teacher evaluations?  By committee meetings--and members--that often drain my last ounce of creativity and interest?"  My external response is a sigh.  I wonder whether it's possible to develop a thirst and drag them to water.

Since one of the teams in my class decided to "fire" a member this week--for communication and performance differences which seem insurmountable to them and are, in fact, the very issues they will encounter in every company, job, and working relationship--I am highly motivated to seize this learning opportunity, both for myself and for my students.

This debate in The Chronicle of Higher Education exemplifies the difference of opinion among educators about what we should teach and why--which, of course, raises the question of how.  And that brings us full circle to assessing whether students are learning what they need to know.  So, one of the assignments for my class next week will be to read the article and the responses.  Then they have to weigh in...in writing...for a grade.  It's a place to start.