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This chapter outlines potential steps to take in designing active learning experiences based on several theories underlying the learning process. The chapter examines theories of learning and instruction including information processing, schema acquisition, and cognitive load theory. Next follows an explanation of how these theories support problem-centered learning as well as a rationale for the need to help learners develop domain-general, flexible problem-solving skills that will transfer to future needs and contexts. The second half of the chapter focuses on designing active learning experiences based on the selection of real-world problems as the foundation for learning, activating prior knowledge, demonstration of the process or concept, multiple opportunities for practice with relevant scaffolding, and the chance to integrate that knowledge into the learners’ own context based on M. D. Merrill’s (2002) First Principles of Instruction. Examples of assessments, strategies, and activities to foster active, problem-centered learning drawn from the literature are also provided.

Recent research on group demography demonstrates that an increase in demographic diversity has both positive and negative effects on group effectiveness. These studies have linked increased group diversity with an increase in creative thinking and innovation, a decrease in intra‐group cohesion, and an increase in intragroup conflict. The cognitive processing framework proposed in this paper integrates these results into a coherent understanding of the effects of diversity on groups. The cognitive framework provides an explanation of group diversity effects and it suggests ways to minimize the negative effects of group diversity.

Students develop knowledge through an ongoing process of learning embodied in their daily experiences. As citizens, they develop an identity in their communities as they build relationships through recurrent interactions, thus constructing citizenship by strengthening stable interactions. This paper aims to examine the development of student active citizenship within a Jean Monnet module summer school that uses a participative approach and experiential learning.

The research provides a multi-level systems perspective on the learning experience in a Jean Monnet module. It combines state-of-the-art analysis of the Jean Monnet modules reports, analysis of a selected module’s activities and delayed participants feedback analysis. The methodology addresses complexity at multiple levels and leaves sufficient variance to invite readers to test the approaches themselves.

First, opportunities and gaps in the development of active citizen abilities were identified within the Jean Monnet modules. Second, it was established that the use of a participative approach and experiential learning aligned activities in the learning process yielded positive results in participant engagement. Third, long-term effects in the form of an improved understanding of active citizenship and the execution of activities in real life were also observed. The authors point to the need for active communication in the development of a full-cycle experiential learning process. Additionally, the multi-level monitoring model contributed positively towards the continual improvement of the learning process, and thus, provided a learning experience for teachers.

The research is limited regarding the clear articulation of the research results, rendering comparison with other learning experience reports challenging.

For lecturers, the importance of integrating the participative approach into the student learning process is documented; the effects of experience learning on students’ active participation are presented; and the importance of systems perspective on multiple aspects of the learning process is reinforced. For students, an example of the importance of being active in the learning process and using available resources is provided. For policymakers, the paper attests to the importance of learning programmes expanding the limitations of the regular curricula and the need to support additional programmes and the benefits of a participative approach and experience learning in the process of developing active citizens.

The authors point to the need for authentic situational-context experience and active communication in the learning process. Additionally, the authors provide an example of systems investigation of the learning process.

The paper identifies the gap between the Jean Monnet modules and active citizen abilities and provides a potential approach towards reducing them. It also provides a multi-level method for monitoring and adjusting the learning process.

In many organisations a lot of effort is put into the formation of a strategy, but the implementation of strategies is lacking. This paper aims to explore the preconditions for a successful strategy process (i.e. a process which results in implementation) in the context of municipal services in Finland. As a case study, the implementation of the city strategy in the home care services in one Finnish municipality is to be examined. The practical goal is to explain, why the implementation of strategy is lacking. The theoretical purpose is to find prerequisites for successful strategy implementation.

The project was carried out by using an action research approach. The data collection and analysis methods were qualitative, including semi‐structured interviews, visual modelling of the strategy processes and observation of group discussions during the intervention day. The content of all the ten transcribed interviews and the transcription of the intervention were systematically analysed. In the context of the city strategy process, two types of fundamental prerequisites for learning were studied: the significance given to the strategy work, and the experience of agency in the strategy process.

The participants in the strategy process were divided into three different organisational levels, the experiences were consistent within organisational levels but they differed between them. Both the strategic‐ and operative‐level employees considered the strategic level as active strategy makers and the operative level as passive receivers of the strategy. Furthermore, the management‐level employees gave high significance to the strategy process, while the significance given to the strategy process by the politicians and the operative‐level employees was low. The above‐mentioned findings may be the reasons why the commitment of staff members to the strategy was low and its implementation ineffective.

In the strategy process of the case municipality, the understanding of the strategy process seemed to be fragmented and rigid, because the spontaneous conceptions of strategy were not problematised and discussed throughout the organisation. To build up a meaningful understanding of the strategy process, the spontaneous conceptions of strategy should be processed at all levels of the organisation. Furthermore, to prevent understanding from becoming fragmentated, the strategy representations should be processed in a common process. If it is supposed to be implemented, the strategy process should be seen as a continuous and comprehensive learning process.

The strategy process is a complex system in which many factors interact simultaneously. Despite this, the relationship between individual learning processes and the strategy process has not been researched before. The paper explores the strategy process as a holistic and systemic learning process in which individual and shared collaborative processes are intertwined.

Although active learning methodologies are recognized as an effective means to achieve expected educational demands, in practice, the teaching and learning processes are still widely characterized by traditional pedagogy aspects. As a result, teaching innovations in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education are carried out in isolation in specific disciplines, programs or departments. To addresses these challenges and to stimulate useful teaching innovations, this study aims to propose the capability maturity model to active learning (CMMAL) for assessing the maturity level of active learning methodologies in higher education institutions (HEIs).

The CMMAL provides inputs for planning and decision-making, identifying variables such as the current state of teaching and learning processes, project management, team development, allocation of resources and infrastructure and the choice of evaluation and assessment methods. From the relevant literature, the primary aspects that impact on active learning were identified and incorporated into the structure of the model. Next, a survey was performed with 295 STEM professors and experts validating the scope of the model proposed.

The findings demonstrated the contribution of the CMMAL mainly to (1) assess the maturity levels of active methodologies in higher education and (2) stimulate the institutionalization of active learning practices in HEIs to minimize some problems related to the dissemination of new teaching practices.

The primary practical and academic contribution of our study is the proposition of an artifact with a scope compatible with the need of the HEIs for the implementation of active learning methodologies. This paper presents a different perspective of current literature in active learning in STEM education, introducing a model that contributes to open the dialogue with HEIs interested in better understand and improve the performance in student-centered pedagogy.

The model also informs and leads to specific recommendations for HEIs seeking to enhance the performance of and alter the culture around active learning methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how firms can use social media such as Facebook to recruit top job prospects.

In the context of a fictitious event presumably sponsored by a potential employer, a sample of university students became members of a new private and secret Facebook user group dedicated to this event for a period of four days. They were exposed to event sponsorship activation messages varying systematically with respect to the mode of processing (i.e. passive or active) and their focus (i.e. the brand or the event).

The results show that their expectations as regards the salary that they would require to become employees were higher in the active mode of processing. Also, their attitude toward the sponsor as an employer was more favorable when the activation messages focussed on the brand rather than on the event. In addition, further analyses showed that the effects of message focus and mode of processing on the attitudinal responses toward the sponsoring employers were mediated by the degree of elaboration and richness of social interactions of the Facebook group's members as well as their attitude toward the activation messages.

Managers seeking to gain a recruiting edge through their social media presence should use online messages that stimulate more active processing and that have high entertainment value since this leads to more favorable responses toward the employer. These messages should insist more on the brand than on the event that is sponsored.

This study is the first study to foray into the usage of social networking sites for recruitment purposes. It represents one of the few research efforts to monitor the interactions of users in a social media platform by means of a controlled experiment performed in situ through the creation of an ad hoc Facebook group.

This chapter focuses on the circumstances under which active clients in universities construct external management consultants as actors. Much research focuses on how consultants legitimize decisions and trends in business organizations, but we know little about how consultants become legitimized as actors in other organizational fields. In the academic field, clients are embedded in a variety of organizational settings embedded in different institutional logics, which determine their sense making. By analyzing how consultants are legitimized, the authors contribute to a better understanding of the organizational preconditions that support the construction of an external expert as an actor. By focusing on IT and strategy consulting in academia, further, the authors discuss the role of competing institutional logics in legitimization processes and the importance of intra-organizational communities.

Modeling and inferring about the process using growth models are the problems of enormous practical importance. Growth behavior of melting point (MP) during hydrogenation is found to be nonlinear. The purpose of this paper is to propose a control chart based method for on-line detection of a growth process becoming dead.

The nonlinear growth kinetics of MP during hydrogenation is modeled as a random walk with drift. In earlier work, the random walk model is developed based on a linear approximation and the control chart is constructed based on this approximate model. Here, an alternative model that does not make use of any such approximation is proposed. The variable drift component of the random walk is estimated following an innovative method of instrumental variable estimation. The model thus obtained is then used to construct a new control chart.

It is shown that both the control charts are able to detect dead batches satisfactorily, but the new chart is superior to the earlier one.

The authors are not aware of any relevant literature which provides an implementable and practitioner friendly approach to model the usually cumbersome variance function using signal-to-noise ratio and then use the same for estimating the parameters of a nonlinear dynamic growth model.

The paper seeks to support a better understanding of the types (or processes) of reflexivity which may be involved in the practice of organizational research, and the implications of reflexive practice for organizational researchers.

A characterization of reflexivity as a process is developed from extant research, in four steps. First, the principal dimensions of reflexivity – reflection and recursion – are identified and delineated. Second, recursion is shown to have two modes, active and passive. Third, reflection is shown to have both closed, self‐guided and open, relational modes. Fourth, through integrating the detailed characterizations of each of the dimensions, different types of reflexivity are identified and defined.

The paper shows how different types of reflexivity may be experienced sequentially, as a progressive process, by organizational researchers. Implications for research practice are derived from a consideration of this process.

The paper develops a novel conceptualization of reflexivity as a process with individual and relational aspects. This conceptualization supports important insights for the conduct and legitimation of reflexive research.

Drawing on a novel approach to active learning in supply chain management, the purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how the students’ learning process as well as their learning outcomes are influenced by the learning and teaching contexts.

A case study of a master’s level purchasing course carried out at two universities in which students work in projects resulting in jointly authored books.

The findings show how the teaching context influenced the learning process and the learning outcomes. Active involvement, self-directed learning, collaborative learning and learning from practice enabled by the set-up of the course are identified as key mechanisms for the learning outcomes in relation to skills and content.

Increasingly, supply chain management graduates have to develop professional, practical, research as well as metacognitive and life-long learning skills during their university education. This paper identifies mechanisms and illustrates how educators can use the set-up of a course to enable students to engage in a learning process resulting in a variety of skills as well as specific content-based aspects of knowledge.