Abstract:

It is well known that the pace in the development of theory in almost all fields of study has never been faster than today. Among other things, this is related to increased emphasis on research, very fast changes in the society and more or less all industries, increased open access to academic journals, not to mention all the changes that are taking place on a global scale, such as global warming and sustainability issues. Furthermore, the war in Ukraine may have an impact on how we need to approach various things in the near future. At the same time, study material in most courses in universities is generally either based on published book on the subject or important and often highly cited articles related to the particular field of study which do not necessarily reflect the most recent changes. To cover the latest development in theory it is therefore helpful to identify new material for use in courses. One of the problems related to this is, that it can be very difficult to identify material that students will find most interesting and that is the most relevant update of theory. Even if professors and lecturers are specialists in the subject there is no guarantee that they will find more interesting articles or updates than the students themselves could identify. Therefore, engaging students to find an interesting update of theory might be an effective approach for dealing with this problem.

For this reason, the author developed an approach and has used assignments called “update of theory”. To test and further develop the assignment, the author followed an action research approach and adjusted the assignment based on experience in a number of courses of different topics in three different universities. The initial assignment was developed in 2009 in a course in international marketing at the masters level and has been updated and developed based on experience in previous courses all the time since, covering approximately 40 courses in total.

In the latest version of the assignment, a group of students will draw a topic covered in the syllabus and assigned an article related to the topic as a foundation for their work. The task for the group is to analyze the theory in the article and provide an update of it based on full-text articles accessible in Web of Science, citing the original article. The group needs to identify how the articles are connected and provide an example of a real business situation that supports the application of the theory and present it in class along with a short video supporting their analysis during the day the topic is covered in the syllabus. They shall then write and submit a summary on the topic (the original article and the update ... mainly the update) and the application example. To induce engagement of the whole class the update and the reports of all groups will be part of reading material for the final exam.

The result of using this type of an assignment indicates high level of engagement by students, creative initiative of finding interesting extension of the topic under discussion and may even induce competition between the groups. The short videos furthermore provide an interesting break-up of classes and induces discussion about the topic. Solving the assignment is furthermore a good preparation for working on the final thesis.

Keywords:

Assignments, Engagement, Development of study material, Ukraine, Identification of material.