Policies for Success
The Business Case for Community Service Learning in Business Schools
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christian Cook
The high-impact teaching practice of community service learning (CSL) can democratize professional development opportunities for learners. Innovative pedagogies of CSL can provide the transformative learning experiences necessary for college and university participants to experience the requisite perspective shift (Mezirow, 1990) from student to professional, greater enabling them for success in their field after graduation. Due to the necessity for many students to engage in survivor jobs (or at least in roles not related to their desired profession post-graduation) while studying at the post-secondary level, participation in co-operative education is not a realistic option to ameliorate the gaps between academic and professional training for all. This can disadvantage students as they proceed to graduation with primarily non-professional work experience and only academic training to pursue their chosen profession. Of particular concern are those students who may be marginalized in several ways, with family and socio-economic status being just two. Management education and business schools may be most at risk to produce graduates that are disproportionately academically trained, yet the occurrence of CSL in business schools lags among other disciplines. Using research gained over five semesters in a capstone strategic human resource management course, data will be shared which support the utility of CSL to foster professional development for all learners in this domain. Practical tools will be provided to build a business case to use the pedagogy of CSL in your business school, to design meaningful curricula and course experiences for students and community partners while employing CSL, and to expertly evaluate the success of your students based on course learning outcomes related to your discipline.
The Erasmus International Work Experience as a Place of Learning : Transformative learning in the Liminal State
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Deborah Steele
Every year an increasing number of students are taking Erasmus work placements or traineeships. This paper details an account of narrative research that explores sojourners experiences of voluntary work placements as part of an Erasmus traineeship. Previous research shows that international work placements are good places for sojourners to learn about themselves and to develop skills and attributes for working with and within other cultures. This qualitative research gathered the life stories of sojourners and narratives of their experiences throughout their time aboard. This research listened to the stories of sojourners, gaining a deeper understanding of the type of learning that took place and offering a theory to explain how that learning occurred and why that learning is transformative. It also, gathered the narratives of a group of sojourners who completed an Erasmus work placement at least two years previously to see if those transformations were long lasting. The results suggested that the liminal state of the international work placement can create the environment for extra rational transformative learning, and develop a form of tertiary socialisation, which allows sojourners a different perspective of the world around them. It also suggested that the changes that take place as part of the experience of living and working abroad stay with sojourners after they return home.
Tell Me, Show Me, Involve Me: The Use of OSCE in the Assessment of Clinical Competence
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tina Moore
For some time now Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have recognised the need to move away from surface learning (lower order skills, such as retention of knowledge and understanding of content) and to develop higher order skills such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Changes to our methods of assessment provide a better opportunity to test these skills. The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) assessment tool also permits the testing of the student’s application of knowledge into the ‘real world’ of nursing practice; level of understanding; attitudes; decision making; communication and critical thinking skills. All are core characteristics of a professional nurse. This concept of the OSCE links well with the theme of creative assessments in that it enables the assessment of more than one specific domain in an innovative way, moving away from the rigidity of traditional assessment approaches. In addition this form of assessment process can be easily adopted by other practice based disciplines as an innovative way in which to assess individual student’s level of knowledge, understanding decision making and psychomotor skills.
