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28:01
Real learning through real projects for management students:
project-based learning for innovation and change
Mårtensson, Pär 1 ; Sannes, Ragnvald 2
1 Stockholm School of Economics, Management and
Organization, Stockholm, Sweden; 2 BI Norwegian Business
School, Department of Leadership and Organisational
Behaviour, Oslo, Norway
Many organizations use projects as means to accomplish
various forms of innovation and change. These task are often
temporal, cross-sectional (or inter-organizational), complex
and novel tasks that put them outside the capability of the line
organization. Innovation and change describe combined efforts
of development or adoption of something new (innovation)
and the implementation of the innovation to an organizational
context (change).
Projects tend to be more successful in organizational contexts
that have developed project management capabilities and a
culture that foster learning across projects (Swan, Scarbrough
& Newell, 2010). Organizations learn from projects by the
accumulated experience of groups and individuals (ibid).
Studies on knowledge transfer in problem-solving point to
similar findings where knowledge is transferred by individuals
and groups sharing experiences during problem-solving
activities.
These results indicate that project-based learning is a feasible
approach for management students to learn about innovation
and change. In this paper we explore and explain the use of
real projects to teach innovation and change to management
students. Based on more than 15 years of experience in
the area, the paper presents an empirical examination of
project characteristics and learning outcomes across different
educational contexts.
The study indicates that the more ”real” a management
student project is, the better outcome in terms of learning
of the subjects at hand. Executive students tend to have
more ”real” projects than younger full-time students. One
possible explanation is that executive students come from
organizational contexts where they relatively easy can identify
problems and opportunities. Another factor may be their
experience by itself, helping them to formulate more focused
problem statements for a project. The study also discusses the
”realness” of the projects used in relation to the business value
through innovation and change created by the projects. Finally
the papers discuss the influence by different stakeholders of the
projects and how this impacts the learning.
The paper ends with some concluding remarks outlining
mechanisms to take into consideration when designing real
learning through real projects for management students.
Reference:
Swan, J., Scarbrough, H. and Newell, S. (2010). 2Why Don’t
(or Do) Organizations Learn from Projects?”, Management
Learning, Vol 41 No 3, pp. 325-344.
28:02
Facecbook - A new approach for educational practice
Ossiansson, Eva
School of Business, Economics & Law, Gothenburg University,
Marketing, Gothenburg, Sweden
For young people between 15-24 years of age, Internet
and Social Media has become a natural part of their lives.
Recent studies have acknowledged this and researchers have
increasingly become interested in how young people use
social media. By studying usage of social networks such as
Facebook in a pedagogical setting, group dynamics, norms
and interactions can be analyzed. For example, one study has
found that there is a strong link between an individual’s social
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identity, group norm and subjective norm. Thus, understanding
norms are essential if social media is to be used in an
educational setting. This is important given the current debate
on whether social media is a suitable learning environment.
Problems in this area that has been debated are often authority
related; lecturer-student power relations, lecturer code of
conduct and technical skills.
In this paper, we intend to analyze how norms develop and
influence student communication (peer-to-peer, group wise,
between groups, the class as a community) and student-lecturer
interaction. In a master course, - a closed Facebook group was
used for the class communication. The Facebook group was the
single use for communication outside the class room, eg. time
schedule, changes in class, booking supervision time etc. It was
also used as a forum for students’, lecturers’ and practitioners’
discussions about the literature, interesting news, films as well
as social interaction.
Our conclusions are that the usage of social media as a
communication platform really changed the norms for
interaction and enhanced all forms of communication.
Students took an active part of sharing additional literature,
articles and films relevant for the course. As the course went
on communication changed more towards communication
“among equals”. Students saw themselves as co-creators
of the course, along with the lecturer responsible for the
course. Therefore, a coach-based authority emerged. Even
though students initially doubted whether they should take
responsibility for their own learning and participation or not,
this gradually changed when using Facebook. In line with
traditional Facebook usage the class members increasingly
saw themselves as a group. Thus, we see this as a promising
research area with great potential for educational relevance.
28:03
The bobsleigh approach in business administration education
Jonnergård, Karin; Boye, Petter
Linnaeus University, School of Business and Economics,
Kalmar, Sweden
The main issue taken up in this paper is how resources are
allocated in higher educational programs – in the beginning or
in the end of the process. Today, higher educational programs
in business administration normally spend more resources per
student at the end of the program than at the beginning. There
are several possible rationalities for this, for example that
higher levels are more advanced and therefore require more
resources or that there are fewer students at the higher levels
than at the lower levels, making it harder to obtain economies
of large scale. We can, however, see that many students fail
the exam because they do not have the necessary knowledge
needed to comprehend the next knowledge module. This,
in turn leads to a situation were teaching resources at the
end of the educational program are used for repetition and
for handling extra exams, etc. Consequently the resources
are not used as intended and the students cannot utilize this
learning opportunity to the full extent. The purpose in this
paper is to propose the ’Bobsleigh approach’ as a new way
to look at resources allocation in business administration
education in order to better understand opportunities for
increased effectiveness in such higher educational programs.
It is important to reconsider the resource allocation in higher
educational programs in business administration, as the results
from the study reported in this paper indicates that resources
allocated from the end to the beginning of the process will
increase educational effectiveness and boost students learning
outcomes in the end of the program. This paper is mainly
based on an explorative study of the development of a higher
educational program in business administration at the Linnaeus
University. The empirical foundation is a longitudinal case
study (Yin, 1994) of the development process, carried out