REAL-LIFE SITUATION IN-CLASS ASSIGNMENTS: CONTEXTUALIZED TO FAST PACED DECISION MAKING IN THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT

A variety of tools have been used in business school teaching to replicate real-life situations, including the case method, simulation and other exercises. The objective is to offer the student an insight into the business world and offer him or her an experience to apply theory in practice. This is important part of preparation for the student to take on responsibility after graduation, such as a manager or analyst in private and public organizations. This teaching approach have proofed to be useful, however, as the context in which the case takes place may be different than applies to the environment in which the student is from and will be working in, or different than the perspective at the time of study, a different method might be more relevant.

A team based, „real-situation in-class assignment“, is being developed, in which unprepared assignments based on current projects in the local environment are used to replicate the application of theory in practice in real time. The assignments offer the student an opportunity to contextualize the theory to his or her culture and environment, which might be more meaningful. This tool was tested in two classes in a master’s program in the Faculty of Business at the University of Iceland; innovation management and international marketing. The results are very promising; students are very active and even excited to take part in the next assignment. Class participation has been between 75-100%, even in a class, which takes place late in the day, which is not desired time by most students, and class attendance is not compulsory.

In the last class of the course, a discussion in the form of fishbowl took place, which resulted in useful review of the different parts of the project and offered students to learn from theirs and other students work. This approach could very well apply in other situations, such as large classes and in other programs. Although different, this assignment is not considered as a replacement for other approaches, but rather complimentary and as part of combined evaluation. In addition to being useful for the students, this type of assignments offers an opportunity to improve the linkages of faculty members to the current environment.

The main benefit of this approach is that it offers the student an opportunity to take part in an assignment highly related to his or her own environment as well as having to take on an unprepared assignment, which is of particular importance given an increasingly limited time for decision-making.