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The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of multiple campus teams as they engaged in the assessment of their science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) mentoring ecosystems within a peer assessment dialogue exercise.

This project utilized a qualitative multicase study method involving six campus teams, drawing upon completed inventory and visual mapping artefacts, session observations and debriefing interviews. The campuses included research universities, small colleges and minority-serving institutions (MSIs) across the United States of America. The authors analysed which features of the peer assessment dialogue exercise scaffolded participants' learning about ecosystem synergies and threats.

The results illustrated the benefit of instructor modelling, intra-team process time and multiple rounds of peer assessment. Participants gained new insights into their own campuses and an increased sense of possibility by dialoguing with peer campuses.

This project involved teams from a small set of institutions, relying on observational and self-reported debriefing data. Future research could centre perspectives of institutional leaders.

The authors recommend dedicating time to the institutional assessment of mentoring ecosystems. Investing in a campus-wide mentoring infrastructure could align with campus equity goals.

In contrast to studies that have focussed solely on programmatic outcomes of mentoring, this study explored strategies to strengthen institutional mentoring ecosystems in higher education, with a focus on peer assessment, dialogue and learning exercises.

This paper aims to provide instructors with a hands-on engaging and experiential class activity designed to teach undergraduate and graduate students about different organizational structures in management courses. Through this exercise, students will be able to self-identify the challenges and strengths of working under contrasting organizational structures.

Split into two (or four) teams, students construct origami animals based on their team’s organizational structure, using both mechanistic and organic structures to create a zoo based on a set of instructions and boundary conditions. Materials required include origami paper, markers, printed instructions, origami animal instructions, and role title cards for each student. The exercise takes approximately 30–45 min, including debriefing discussion. All materials/instructions needed are included with this paper (except origami paper and markers).

Through this exercise, students internalize the challenges and strengths of working in organizations with contrasting structures. The debrief discussion will help solidify student understanding of what the day to day experience of working in different organizational structures might look like, the pros and cons of different structures, and what type of employees or industries might thrive under different structures.

This paper is being submitted for the “Special Issue Call for Papers: Modern Day Experiential Exercises.”

This activity allows students to draw their own conclusions about organizational structure and to engage in a fruitful discussion about what working at different types of organizations looks like on a day-to-day basis.

This activity allows students to strengthen their skills in communication, teamwork, and leadership by having them work in teams to complete a challenging, competitive task.

While teaching organizational structure in management courses has traditionally been limited to traditional forms of instruction such as lecturing and reviewing different organizational charts, this activity gives students a fun competitive in-class activity in which they practice working as a part of contrasting organizational structures to see what type of structure they might thrive in.

Existing literature points out that conventional educational modes are not sufficiently motivational for students. Concurrently, the contemporary society requires awareness of sustainability within project management. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the use of simulations in project management education can positively impact students’ awareness of sustainability and enhance their ability to navigate projects in a sustainable way.

Experiment where 26 experienced professionals with different backgrounds engaged in three extensive project management simulations with sustainable aspects and participated in pre- and post-assessments.

Our research shows that simulations have a high potential for enhancing learning on project management with sustainable aspects. We conclude that simulations can significantly contribute to enhancing student awareness of sustainability. This is through directly confronting them with three areas in which sustainability impacts project management, that is the management of environmental, social, and economic aspects; through handling opportunities, complexities, and adaptability; and by assuming responsibility for sustainable development in the simulation case.

We have shown that simulations – as a part of project management education – are highly likely to augment students' capacity to navigate their projects in a sustainable way.

This paper offers results of an empirical study on simulations as a means to create awareness of ability to navigate projects in a sustainable way. The paper provides extensive qualitative statements from participants, and thereby gives the reader insights into the raw data leading to insightful conclusions for the field of project management education.

This paper aims to describe an experiential learning activity designed to sensitize students to the prevalence and challenges of disclosing invisible disabilities in the workplace. It provides an impactful learning experience about a widespread phenomenon that receives little attention in textbooks.

The exercise assigns a hidden disability to some participants who interact with others who act as trusted friends. The interactions help participants develop their ability to interact sensitively with those who may have hidden disabilities. They explore the advantages and disadvantages of disclosing hidden disabilities at work. Guiding questions help focus deliberations during which participants consider the influence of their assigned role.

A plenary discussion follows where students share the outcomes of the simulation. Debriefing questions and suggested answers help instructors deepen student learning on the topic. A follow-up assignment allows participants to summarize personal learning about the subject and solidify the learning outcomes.

Most workers with nonapparent disabilities hide them, although disclosing them may help their employers provide helpful accommodations. This learning activity helps increase awareness and understanding of hidden disabilities in work settings and supports learning about disclosing and accommodating disabilities in the workplace. Instructors can use the activity to support understanding of employee rights, equity and accommodations in large or small classes, in-person or online, synchronously or asynchronously.

This paper aims to provide an experiential learning exercise that develops student skills in assertive communication and listening in the context of dysfunctional group projects. It offers iterative planning, roleplays and reflection. Variations incorporate additional practice, interim debriefing or multiple partners.

A scaffolded approach introduces assertiveness and listening. Students prepare and discuss feedback scripts for two scenarios about problematic team members, articulate perceptions of blame (to call attention to bias) and identify listening tactics. They receive additional scenarios with complementary roles to analyze individually and then practice with new partners. In one, they are assertive, and in the other, they are the dysfunctional group member.

The challenges represented by the scenarios resonate with students. Many are shocked by the difficulty of speaking assertively with “problem” group members and find the iterative practice helpful.

Students avoid directly addressing problems caused by peers or request instructor intervention. This iterative activity helps them close the knowing-doing gap by practicing assertive communication, feedback and listening within the context of realistic group project situations.

This activity develops learner confidence and capacity to handle similar situations. It incorporates valuable soft skills that are transferable to the workplace.

This activity draws on common problems caused by group members in college project teams. Learners develop scripts and listening approaches and practice assertive communication to achieve better group outcomes.

This study aims to introduce management students to climate change by providing them with an opportunity to address it in their own lives, through a class exercise.

An in-class exercise was designed, carried out and described in this study. Student teams were assigned different questions on how to address major causes of climate change. Each team did research to generate answers, and ranked their answers based on the speed of implementation. Teams reported their answers to the class. The instructor facilitated a debriefing session, during which all responses were ranked with respect to other variables, including cost savings, time savings and lifestyle fit. This exercise uses few resources and can be adapted to different time lengths and teaching/learning formats (e.g. on-ground, virtual, asynchronous online).

This exercise can help students to gain an understanding of climate change and its causes and complexities. Students learn how to implement a diverse set of personal actions to mitigate climate change; these can start in the present and continue throughout their lives. In addition, this exercise may help students to make the leap from individual climate change mitigation practices to organizational and societal practices, when they are in the position to do so as future leaders.

Although classes, exercises, and assignments ask management students to consider issues such as climate change at the organizational level, this individual-level exercise can allow students with limited organizational experience to engage more quickly with climate change and better understand organizational and societal implications in the future. That is, if students first understand how to address climate change in their own lives, they may more effectively transfer and apply that understanding at organizational and societal levels and ultimately synthesize solutions to address climate change in the world.

This study reports on changes made within the study, plan, teach and reflect steps of lesson study with pre-service teachers who were learning to teach within a disciplinary literacy course.

Using methods associated with formative experiments and design-based research, this study gathered data over four iterations of the disciplinary literacy course. Data included the course materials, pre-service teachers’ written work, observational notes from research lessons, transcripts of post-lesson discussions and teacher-educators’ analysis sessions and pre-service teachers’ post-program interviews. Data were analyzed within and across iterations.

Initial adjustments to the lesson study process focused on the reflect step, as we learned to better scaffold pre-service teachers sharing of observational data from research lessons. Later adjustments occurred in the study and plan steps, as we refined the design of four-day lesson sequences that better supported pre-service teachers’ attention to disciplinary literacy while providing room for their instructional mentors to provide specific team-based feedback. Adjustments to the teach step included reteaching and more explicit attention to literacy objectives.

This paper contributes to the literature by explicitly applying formative experiment and design-based research methods to the implementation of lesson study with pre-service teachers. Furthermore, it contributes examples of lesson study within a disciplinary literacy context, expanding the examples of lesson study’s applicability across content areas.

The purpose of this manuscript is to highlight how gamification is transforming recruitment, retention and training to resolve employee engagement challenges in the ever-changing workplace. In collaborating with game industry experts and designers, the authors taught students team leadership skills by demonstrating how to design and play their own original cooperative strategy games. In doing so, students learn what gamification is and how it can be used to train our multigenerational workforce; how designing board games teaches team leadership skills (e.g. communication, conflict management, power, decision-making); and how to develop cooperative strategy game elements (player characters, roles and actions) that motivate engaging gameplay with successful learning outcomes.

In this paper, the authors discuss the practical implications of a three-phase semester-long experiential learning experience, where game design demonstrates to students how employees can work collaboratively together in teams. Students’ developed storylines (i.e. strategic objectives) including motivation challenges, social media communication breakdowns, sabotage, global sustainability and other real-world challenges. In Phase 1, students learn about how companies are using gamification in training high-performing teams. In Phase 2, students play a cooperative strategy game Forbidden Island with their student teams. In Phase 3, students design (and play) their original cooperative strategy game, instructions booklet and build a facilitation guide.

Approximately, 400 students developed 48 original cooperative strategy games that can be used to teach team leadership skills. These student teams designed cooperative strategy board games – in which the entire team either wins or loses based on their control of valued resources and player actions as key decision-making points. The data and feedback indicate that the learning experience helped them practically consider team interdependence in making effective decisions, and in creating creative self-efficacy, resilience and self-confidence in their own leadership voice. In this manuscript, the authors focus on providing an overview and implementation plan for our semester-long experiential learning exercise.

This experiential exercise was implemented from 2019 to 2023 in different learning modalities (face-to-face, hybrid, 100% synchronous online learning) and during challenging times (prepandemic, pandemic and postpandemic learning environments). These varying experiences provided them with a challenge to persevere and learn about their own interpersonal skills and resilience in a creative engaging way with limited resources. Students developed 26 original games during 100% synchronous remote learning due to COVID. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other business school is working with gaming industry experts and game designers to teach team leadership to this degree during pre- and postpandemic environments.

The purpose of this paper is to share the process, findings and conclusions from one library’s iterative usability study of its website design to inform other libraries as they perform their own assessments.

A task-completion usability study was conducted with eight undergraduate students across two iterations: the first gauged the usability of a redesigned library website and the second gauged the effectiveness of the first iteration’s findings.

We found that users performed better when the site provided multiple access points to the same information, displayed a prominent chat feature, limited the amount of text on a given page and avoided library jargon. Not only was the second round of testing important for confirming that first-round recommendations were effective but also it proved useful in catching a problem with the site that was unintentionally created during the time between tests.

No demographic data were collected during the study, thus hindering our ability to analyze our users through these data points.

This study demonstrates the value of iterative usability testing, especially when untested changes made between site versions may produce usability issues.

Management educators often seek out innovative ways to introduce theories and concepts in such a way that students are more engaged and connected with the course material. A meme is an image juxtaposed with short text that elicits emotional responses from its readers and is now a staple in social media. Examples include: grumpy cat, success kid and distracted boyfriend. The authors have successfully used memes both online and in-person as a teaching tool. This paper aims to describe how the authors have used memes and some of the best practices and lessons learned from this experience.

Students in a training and development undergraduate course and an organizational behavior MBA course were tasked with creating and presenting memes that reflected the subject matter in their respective courses.

Their fellow students were successful in identifying the course theory or concept when these student presenters presented their memes in class. This suggests that this type of activity is helpful for students to apply a key course concept or theory in a way that was fun and interactive. Follow-up feedback from the students indicated that they enjoyed this type of activity and felt that it aided in their retention of course material.

While memes are quite popular in social media, there is a paucity of academic articles on the application of memes for teaching management concepts. This article guides instructors on how the authors have used memes in the classroom and offers some suggestions for doing a debrief afterward.