THE PROSPECTS FOR CREATIVE TEACHING Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, Volume 25, 1998 THE PROSPECTS FOR CREATIVE TEACHING Patricia Sanders, Siena College ABSTRACT A discussion with Patricia Sanders, Dean of Business at Siena College is conducted. Dean Sanders ponders the question regarding the role of teaching in our colleges and provides some of her answers to the challenges facing higher education today. INTRODUCTION In the film Fiddler on the Roof the Rain character Tevye rhetorically asked the question about his fiercely independent community, “How do we keep our balance?” He answered his question with the single word “tradition!” Tevye then asked another question. “How did our traditions get started?” His answer was “I don’t know, but because of our traditions everyone knows who he is.” I have posed these questions over the past few years to business faculty and the answers have been interesting. First, I rarely get an answer without the need for further explanation. Second, when the question is answered it is rarely answered with “teaching” or the “student experience”. Yet historically, teaching has been the heart of our enterprises and students are the reason for our profession’s existence. What precisely our traditions and where and when did our “teaching” balance become “undone”? I approach this discussion on creative teaching in a quasi-historical fashion supported by personal and professional anecdotes. While I strongly believe creative teaching and teaching excellence does exist and always has, I also believe that certain trends have served as disincentives to realizing creative teaching over the past 50 years. These trends include (1) an obsession with counting in the form of head counts, session counts, student credit hours, faculty load, faculty “productivity” and cost containment, (2) a focus on credentialing or degree “production” rather than on learning and sharing knowledge, (3) compromising the line between academic freedoms and professional responsibility and (4) placing teaching, research and service in discrete categories. In Raking these observations I am not suggesting we abandon credit accumulation schema, discontinue the granting of degrees or relinquishing academic freedom. When these “traditions” interfere with creative teaching or creating an exciting learning environment, however, they must be reexamined and challenged. Moving from a historical perspective where do we stand now? I believe we tend to separate our activities into opposite or Mutually-exclusive positions-teaching vs. learning, simulations vs. experiential exercises, the past vs. the future. In reality these activities lie on a continuum and can benefit from greater integration while maintaining our “roots” in the student experience. A recent report entitled “Returning to Our Roots: The Student Experience” published by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges rejected three beliefs and traditions commonly-held in higher education. The first rejected belief holds that a college education ends with a degree. The second is that the student experience is reserved for those between the ages of 18 and 25 and who are willing to attend school full-tine. The third is that the university’s experience is restricted to its physical campus boundaries. These beliefs are being challenged and this challenge extends well beyond public and land grant universities. Business programs in small liberal arts institutions have a special role and they can contribute handily to managerial education and creative collaborations between various constituencies. 25 Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, Volume 25, 1998 Now let’s look at the future of creative teaching and institutional vitality and reinvigoration. In traveling around the world and observing higher education in other places, it can be concluded without bias that we in the United States have invented teaching effectiveness and are world leaders in this area. The fact that our systems are emulated in so many corners of the world attests to this. Yet many challenges lie ahead for us. These include: Creating new partnerships between faculty and students. Professors will no longer be the knowledge experts in the classroom. Instead professor will become facilitators in a learning environment and students will assume greater responsibility for obtaining educational outcomes. Alliances will be created with “nontraditional” educational providers. We can view the growing number of corporate universities and for-profit providers as competitors or as partners. The institutions that develop creative alliances with these providers will be the winners. Reestablishing the public’s trust in teaching. Teaching is a public trust as parents trust us with their students as well as with their tuition dollars. The business community trusts us to turn out well-educated students and a well-prepared workforce. Various governments and foundations trust us with subsidies and scholarship dollars. This trust has eroded, however, as the perceived value of a college education has not kept pace with that education’s rising cost. Increasing the institution’s flexibility and redefining its governance. The institution’s bureaucracy, and its needs for quantified inputs and outputs, stifles creative teaching. We need to be diligent in developing structures that promote creative teaching, team teaching and interdisciplinary teaching. Integrating competing positions and philosophies regarding the nature of the professor’s lifework. The “versus” dichotomies presented earlier must be removed and replaced by “ands”. For example, new knowledge Rust be researched and discovered and then passed onto students. At other times a nagging question posed by a student can lead to an interesting research project. The courage to put students first. From their inception universities were established to serve students. In our post-World War II society, however, pure research became the goal and it became king and teaching became the peasant. This is a lengthy and ambitious list of challenges. Without sounding trite these challenges also represent opportunities. We are educators on the edge of a new millennium. It is exciting, as well as somewhat overwhelming, to realize we have an opportunity to shape the contours of higher education well into the next century. In the final analysis even traditions change. Our challenge will be merging the strengths of today’s traditions with the opportunities afforded us to create a new set of traditions that will take us to the 21st century and beyond. 26 Table of Contents Volume 25, 1998 Marketing Goes to the Movies Bringing Experiential Learning to a Principles of Marketing Course Investment Analysis Application Using In-house Spreadsheet Models SugarCoated Statistics: An Exercise for the First Day of Class Improving Undergraduate Student Involvement in Management Science and Business Writing Courses Using the Seven Principles in Action Establishment and Funding for Interuniversity / Multidisciplinary Student experiences The Prospects of Creative Teaching: A Discussion with Patricia Sanders The Simulation and Classroom Assessment Techniques Developments of Management Skill Assessment Games as Instruments of Assessment: A Framework for Evaluation The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Business Curricula Threshold Solo Competitor: A Management Simulation (V1.0) a Windows-Based. Play Alone, Total Enterprise Simulation and Assessment Instrument Toward An Understanding of One's self-concept Total Enterprise Simulations and the Internet: Improving Student Perceptions and Simplifying Administrative Workloads The Expatriate an Assignment Orientation Game An Expatriate's Nightmare: An Experiential Exercise in Coping with Overseas Assignments Analyzing Experiential Exercise: Using the Scientific Method for Problem Solving The Second Component to Experiential Learning: A Look Back at How ABSEL has handled the Conceptual and Operational Definitions of Learning Predictive Models of Learning: Participant Satisfaction of Experiential Exercises in Business Education Accelerating Moral Development through Use of Experiential Ethical Dilemmas Ethical Dilemmas to use with Business Simulations to Teach Ethics The Class Approach in Behavioral Simulation in a Business Policy/Strategic Management course: A Progression toward Greater Realism An Exploration of the Emergence of Process Prototypes in a Management Course Utilizing a Total Enterprise Simulation How Organizations Are Improving Their Performance Utilizing Electronic Commerce: Examples From The Internet The Market Access Planning System (Maps): A Computer-Based Decision Support System For Facilitating Experiential Learning In International Business An Excel Workbook For Student Planning And Interface With A Simulation Game Design Of Multi-Media Based Pedagogy For Leadership Training Panel Discussion On Using The Internet For Courses Valuing And Enhancing Teaching: Sharing Tips Via The Web The Buddy Project: A Semester Long Project Aimed At Developing An Appreciation For Diversity Enhancing The Excitement And Learning Retention In The Classroom: The Power Of Magic The Supervised Management Internship: A Job Or Learning Experience Team Ware™ An Online Moderated Class Discussion Facility And Beyond A Neophyte Distance Educator's Experience Learning Management By Practicing Management: A Report Of Significant Student Service In 1997 Integration Of Academic And Service Learning: Students' Perceptions About Its Effects And Outcomes The Value Of Incorporating A Service Learning Component Into Course Content: A Presentation And Roundtable Discussion Business Games Teach: Thoughts on the Sources of Conflicting Conclusions on their Effectiveness Antecedents Of Learning In The Simulation: A Replication Using Student Journals To Enhance Learning From Simulations Technological Change And Intertemporal Movements In Consumer Preferences In The Design Of Computerized Business Simulations With Market Segmentation Integrating The Marketing Curriculum Using Collaborative Learning Teaching Time Management In A Sales Program: The Application Of A Computer Simulation Game Adapting Interactive Computer Simulations For Content Based Esl Instruction Multimedia And Student Expectations Synthesizing Data For Media Simulations Composing A Team Health Promoting Behaviors-A Decision Making Exercise Does it really Work? An Application of the Group Interaction Framework Administering the MIT Beer Game: Lessons Learned A Paperless Economy? Instructing Students on the Aspects of Successful Electronic Commerce Maximizing Learning Gains in Simulations: Lessons from the Training Literature Observing General Ability in a Total Enterprise Gaming Simulation FReach Teach: A Computer-Based System for Teaching Advertising Media Planning An Integrated Business Instruction System An Experiential Exercise you can Tinker With Experiential Exercises or Computer Simulations? Cash Flow Statements: Are They Important in Business Simulations? Holistic Cognitive Strategy in a Computer-Based Marketing Simulation Game: An Investigation of Attitudes Towards the Decision-Making Process Barnga: A Game on Cultural Clashes The Many Faces of Culture: Understanding Country and Corporate Culture Students' View of the Use of Business Gaming in Hong Kong Assessing General Management Interest What is the Future of Business Gaming? Starting a Small Music Trivia Business Exercise and Other Innovative Icebreakers An Integrated Approach to Behavioral Skill Development Career Focus: A Student and Business Learning Experience The Use of Concept Mapping in Teaching Strategic Management An Experiential Approach to Developing Mission Statements Business Games in Brazil-Learning or Satisfaction A Simulation within a Simulation: Job Layoff's and Emotional Reactions