Volume 6, Number 2, December 2014, Abstracts

Shark Attack! Using an Online Tool to Enhance Student Learning

Dawn Deeter-Schmelz, Kansas State University. Manhattan, Kansas USA

ABSTRACT

Today’s undergraduate, a member of Generation Y or Generation Z, tends to be technologically savvy and an avid multitasker with a short attention span. These traits result in a new set of learning preferences instructors should consider when developing and delivering course content. This paper proposes the use of Brainsharks®, a voice-over video solution, as a way to deliver class content online, thereby freeing up class time for the application of concepts. The implementation of Brainsharks® in an undergraduate sales management class is discussed and preliminary results reviewed. Based on these findings, challenges and opportunities are presented.

Keywords:  Gen Y, Gen Z, online content, Brainshark, video solution, teaching tool, classroom innovation

Using Student Feedback to Revise a Flipped Operations Management Class

Claudia H. Pragman, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota, USA

ABSTRACT

Instructional videos were used to teach 58 students the quantitative component of an operations management course. The course was taught as a flipped class: students watched the videos before class and solved their homework problems during class time. At the end of the course, they completed a questionnaire about their experience. Students who found learning more difficult in the flipped class environment reported that they needed more video examples, often came to class unprepared, failed to benefit from teamwork, implied their grades suffered, and did not appreciate the convenience of watching the videos on their own schedule. The author/instructor will make changes to the course based on these findings.

Keywords: flipped class, flipped classroom, flipped course, operations management class

The Frolick & DeTour Model: Role-Playing to Prepare Students for the Legal Environment of Business

Matt Roessing, Georgia College & State University – Milledgeville, Georgia, USA

ABSTRACT

Today’s business students graduate into an environment where they must take significant responsibility for legal matters.  A basic legal education can help students assess risks, conduct preliminary research, and efficiently communicate with professional counsel.  This paper describes a series of role-playing exercises that I developed for undergraduate students in a Legal Environment of Business class.  The exercises span the entire semester and invite students to take on the role of associates in the fictional business law firm of “Frolick & DeTour LLP.”  By playing the role of lawyers advising business leaders, students learn and practice the critical skills of (1) attaining substantive legal knowledge, (2) performing detailed legal analysis, and (3) effectively communicating with stakeholders.  In this paper, I discuss the value of role-play as a pedagogical tool, provide sample exercises, and describe how I designed the exercises to cumulatively impart key business law skills over the course of a semester.   

Keywords: business law, legal environment of business, role-play, legal analysis.

Meeting the Challenge of Developing Innovative Problem-Solving Students Using Design Thinking and Organizational Behavior Concepts

Lori A. Coakley, Bryant University - Rhode Island USA

Michael A. Roberto, Bryant University - Rhode Island USA

James C. Segovis, Bryant University - Rhode Island USA

ABSTRACT

This teaching brief describes the Innovation and Design Experience for All (IDEA) program at Bryant University, an intensive three-day experiential learning program for 891first-year students to teach them about the process of  innovation. The 56 hour experience introduces students to the design thinking process with a learning-by-doing philosophy.   Students work in teams on design challenges during the three-day program, mentored by faculty, staff, upperclassmen students, and alumni.   Through their work on these projects, and the counsel of mentors, they learn how to innovate using the design thinking methodology.   Students learn that traditional strategic planning and decision-making processes are often not well-suited for generating and implementing breakthrough ideas.   Design thinking proves beneficial as a process for challenging existing ways of thinking, as well as to generate and test breakthrough innovations.   This paper describes the program in detail, offers data on effectiveness, and outlines lessons that we have learned.  

Keywords: Action learning, creativity, design thinking, innovation, interdisciplinary learning, programmatic change

Principles of Economics Textbooks: A Readability Analysis

Kenneth J. Plucinski, State University of New York at Fredonia, New York, USA

Mojtaba Seyedian, State University of New York at Fredonia, New York, USA

ABSTRACT

Selection of a textbook for use in introductory economics courses can be challenging. Many criteria may be considered in such decisions, including a textbook’s readability. Using a widely-used readability index, this study analyzes the predicted readability of ten principles of economics textbooks. T-tests are performed to determine whether significant differences exist between the texts. The study finds that one text is more readable than most of the others. The findings can be useful to adopters and editors of introductory economics textbooks.

Keywords:  readability, economics principles, textbook, Flesch-Kincaid

Increasing Student Appreciation of

A Liability That’s Liable To Be Good and Insightful

Martin L. Gosman, Quinnipiac University, Hamden CT, USA

ABSTRACT

Firms as varied as retailers, fitness clubs, airlines, and universities each receive cash in return for the obligation to provide goods or services in the future. The resulting obligation could require the firm to honor gift cards, allow use of a fitness club, provide a future airline flight, or allow attendance at courses next semester. A database created from 202 firms’ 10-K disclosures revealed that those companies collectively reported unearned revenue of over $51 billion at Fiscal 2013 year-end. Unearned revenue exceeded $250 million for one in six firms and this “good” liability exceeded the firm’s accounts-payable balance for one-fourth of the companies. The equivalent of order backlog for a manufacturer, these “good” liabilities represent guaranteed future revenue. Their existence and magnitude can make the discussion of liabilities more interesting and relevant, given that many students have worked at retailers, received gift cards, or booked airline tickets in advance and all have paid tuition ahead of receiving their instruction.

Keywords:  unearned revenue, gift cards, “good” liabilities

THE STRATEGY WAGON WHEEL AND ITS APPLICATION FOR TEACHING STRATEGY

©Peter Geoffrey Bowen, Ph. D., Daniels College of Business, The University of Denver

ABSTRACT   

Strategic planning and its implementation are cardinal management activities, yet neither is entirely instinctive for every business executive or entrepreneur.  A focus on operations will often replace both and when one looks at failing companies, an executive focus on operations alone with the resulting loss of market share is often the diagnosis.  Yet there is another part to that diagnosis in this era of complexity: effectively using intra/ inter-company analytic and activity relationships, which today are crucial to creating and implementing a strategic plan. 

Teaching strategic planning, its implementation and the crucial relationships to both graduate and undergraduate students can be fraught with some of the same issues--among them a lack of student understanding that strategic and collaborative relationships within a business are among the keys for effective operation.  This partly derives from the subject silos which exist at many business schools.  The Strategy Wagon Wheel© (SWW) enables both executives and students to visualize strategy as the core and understand the necessary relationship of management analyses and activities. The result is an intellectual check-list for executives, particularly when considering a new direction for their companies and good fodder for classroom discussions particularly for student analyses of cases.

KEYWORDS:  Strategy, wheel, complexity, liberal arts, management, analogy, evaluation, multi-disciplinary, relationships, collaboration, motivation, spokes, innovation, effectiveness, globalization, accountability, ethics, social responsibility, compliance, decentralization.  

Incorporating Strategy and Business Model Innovation into a Capstone Course Using a Shared Services Center Case Approach

Staci R. Lugar-Brettin, Indiana Institute of Technology - Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.

Jorge Zazueta, Indiana University-Purdue University - Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.

ABSTRACT

The traditional business education model is designed to be cumulative: starting with a business foundations course, isolating the disciplines essential to business policy, and then assimilating the business disciplines in a final project that requires an advanced mastery of business policy, strategy planning, and strategic-level administrative decision-making. The ideal capstone project should be designed to allow students to explore organizations characterized by competitive intensity, technological turbulence, and demand uncertainty, while coupling students’ cumulative learning with a strategic methodology to innovate business models along the dimensions of efficiency, effectiveness, and perceived value. The study of Shared Services Centers provides a way to join business strategy and business model innovation in a final capstone project.

Keywords: business policy, business strategy, strategic-level administrative decision-making, business model innovation, competitive intensity, technological turbulence, demand uncertainty, efficiency, effectiveness, perceived value, shared services centers, capstone project

Interpreting Output Generated by Best Subsets Regression

Norman E. Pence, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

Joseph P. Hasley, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the best subsets regression procedure from the perspective of pedagogy in teaching multiple regression analysis to business majors.  A technique is presented which explains how to interpret the output generated using best subsets regression.  The rationale for using this technique and the resulting advantage to the student is discussed.

Keywords:  Best-subsets regression, Model building, All  possible regressions

A New Graduate Accounting Course for the Small Business Accountant

Letitia Meier Pleis, Metropolitan State University of Denver – Colorado, USA

Abstract

Accounting is one of the major obstacles that many small business owners must overcome. Often the small business owner lacks accounting skills and focuses on the primary product or service that the business provides rather than properly preparing and maintaining the accounting side of the business.  This problem becomes worse when the small business owner does not know where to turn for help and does not know if the help they are getting is correct when it is sought out. 

Another side of the issue is that today’s typical accounting curriculum does not prepare the future accountant to help these small businesses.  Most of the courses the accounting student takes are related to large corporations and the student is encouraged to specialize in one area (financial, audit, managerial).  A small business needs an accountant that can give tax, cost, and planning advice. 

In the spring of 2012, Metropolitan State University of Denver offered a course in its master’s program that focused on teaching the accounting student about working with small businesses.  The course had two components.  The first half of the semester the students learned about issues facing the small business.  These issues included tax at all levels, employees, breakeven, budgeting, and company formation.  The second half of the semester students worked directly with small businesses on an accounting issue.  The course was offered again in the fall of 2013 and changes and additions were implemented.  This paper includes details about the course, the experience of working with the small business, and suggested improvements that were implemented in the fall 2013 class as well as improvements for future versions of this course.   

Keywords: course design, small business accounting

The Role of Knowledge in the Effectiveness of Business Ethics Education

Thomas L. Rakestraw, Jr.  Youngstown State University, Ohio, USA

ABSTRACT

The mechanisms by which subjects’ ethical attitudes are changed through their experiences with a typical business ethics education are examined.  It is hypothesized that the positive change in attitudes will be greatest for those students who actually retain factual knowledge and whose attitudes are such that they attend to ethical issues in their environment.  Therefore scores on a test of factual knowledge and awareness of ethical issues reported in the news media were expected to be related to students’ attitudes toward ethical dilemmas in business.  Those students with more knowledge were expected to be more likely to perceive ethical violations as being “very unethical” and to also be more aware of such ethical violations in their environment, as reported by news media.  This is viewed as the first step toward them being more likely to exhibit ethical behavior themselves.  Partial support was found for the hypotheses.

Keywords:  Ethics, ethics education, ethical attitudes

A Model of a Business School’s Recruitment Efforts

Katherine L. Jackson, Truman State University, Missouri, USA

Alan B. Davis, Truman State University, Missouri, USA

Datha Damron-Martinez, Truman State University, Missouri, USA

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a Midwestern, liberal arts university in a remote location that has employed both their faculty and students in the recruitment process. With a standing Recruitment Committee, the School of Business involves faculty at nearly every level of the recruitment process. From traditional planned group campus visits to one-on-one visits, family members and prospective students interact with a faculty steeped in a long-standing involvement with our recruitment efforts. We also utilize student panels, student organizations, individualized classroom visits and employ outreach of personalized communication as parts of a collaborative process that builds our bridge of persuasion across which students make their journey to our campus.

KEY WORDS:  recruitment, liberal arts, colleges, higher education marketing.

Designing the Business Strategy Game to Promote Strategic Thinking and Student Engagement:  An Application of the Four Disciplines of Execution

Brad Mayer, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

Kathleen Dale, Minnesota State University, Mankato Minnesota

Marilyn L. Fox, Minnesota State University, Mankato Minnesota

ABSTRACT

Strategic thinking and student engagement within a team using business simulations are widely recognized as problems in business strategy classes.  There is also a concern that business schools are not preparing students with the necessary teamwork skills that are transferable to the workplace.  In this paper, we propose a framework for developing effective teams and team leaders in business strategy classes by implementing McChesney, Covey, and Huling’s (2012) Four Disciplines of Execution. The proposed framework will be instrumental to effective strategic thinking and student engagement within a business simulation.

Keywords:  Strategic Thinking, Student Engagement, Business Strategy Game, Four Disciplines of Execution

Incorporating Financial Planning Case Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum

Paul L. Camp, Ph.D., CFP^®

Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA

Deborah Gilliard, Ph.D.

Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA

ABSTRACT

Case study approaches to financial planning represent the opportunity to assess the degree to which students have truly internalized the technical aspects of their coursework.  At the same time, such courses offer the ability to assess students on their development and mastery of skill sets that are not typically part of an undergraduate curriculum, yet are seen as particularly important to employers: the ability to analyze data and recommend action, written and verbal communication skills, just to name a few.  This paper presents a blueprint for the design of a case study class that provides the instructor the ability to assess students’ verbal, non-verbal and written communication skills as well as their problem solving abilities in a personal financial planning context. 

Keywords:

Financial planning, case studies, money management, course design

Price Discrimination: A Classroom Exercise

John B. White, United States Coast Guard Academy, New London, CT, USA

ABSTRACT:  Price discrimination is a common topic in most introductory courses in microeconomics.  These students have experienced markets where multiple prices are charged, such as movie theaters.   However, they find that neither the discussions nor graphical presentations used in most textbooks to be very helpful in explaining how price discrimination works to increase profits.  This paper uses numerical examples that clearly demonstrate how the effective use price discrimination results in higher profits.  

Keywords: price discrimination, pricing strategy, elasticity of demand

How Teaching Statistics can be Optimized as a Directed Iterative Process

Chris W. Brune, Ouachita Baptist University

Marshall J. Horton, Ouachita Baptist University

Philip F. Rice, Ouachita Baptist University

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationships between typical undergraduate business statistics subjects and how they are used in downstream courses and beyond, using commonly taught business and economics courses as stations for reinforcing statistical concepts through applications.  The role of accreditation in steering statistical applications is considered, with three levels of accreditors allowing programs to self-select into teaching, application, and research.  The traditional approach of training undergraduate business majors for careers in industry, with possible graduate training later in the career, is the example used in this paper.

 Keywords:  statistics, business, education, iterative learning