Beedie School of Business News

Our own Teaching and Learning Group launched Talking about Teaching Brown Bag Lunch Sessions on February 1. The purpose of Talking about Teaching is to create a learning community for our teachers. The initiative brings teachers together, in community, to share things they are doing to engage students, provide opportunities to discuss and model characteristics of quality teaching, to get support with teaching challenges, and to try out new ideas or concepts before introducing them to students. The intention behind Talking about Teaching is to engage participants in discussions about pedagogical goals and promote the practice of critical reflection, as well as increase the awareness of the scholarship of teaching and learning.

For a learning community, like Talking about Teaching, to be successful we need to create a space where participants are free to engage in open discussions about teaching (Knowles 1980). To ensure this, some guiding principles have been developed on the basic principles of adult education.

Sessions will be offered monthly (presently at Burnaby and Surrey, and hopefully soon at Segal) on different days to allow for people to have a chance to attend. They run over the lunch hour from noon to 1:30pm, so bring your lunch.

At each session, one person who volunteers prior to the event to present, will share a teaching activity or experience that worked well or a challenge s/he would like to receive input on from the group. Key concepts and resources will be shared with participants, as well as being posted on the Teaching and Learning website. The size of the group is limited to approximately 15 people to allow for engaged discussion.

Since this is a new initiative, it will likely shift, morph and evolve over time.

Our First Talking about Teaching Featured Kathleen Burke and Adam Mills and began with Kathleen Burke discussing how she uses poetry in her Ethics classes to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. Burke, who comes from an Arts background and has been teaching since 1998, recited a poem from Sharon Olds entitled “The Summer Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb”. The intention of using poetry is to speak in a slant – to get the students to hear a message that comes at them from a different angle or, rather more implicitly than explicitly.

Adam Mills, one of our PhD students, considers himself lucky because he gets to do something he loves – teaching. He likes to create experiential opportunities for students. He described how, in his Entrepreneurship class, he has student teams create businesses. He likes to provide an opportunity for students to get first-hand experience, to integrate their learning more so than with a cognitive or case a case-based approach.

During the feedback process at the end of the session, participants liked the opportunity to hear about innovative things others are doing, having the focused discussion at the beginning, and hearing what others do. They also liked the size (13 people) of the group and found the discussion inspiring. It was suggested that we have only one speaker per session to allow more time for discussion. Also, it was suggested to hold monthly sessions, which already was the plan. Participants mentioned they would like more examples and, possibly, would like to play the role of student in order to fully experience the examples provided by the presenter.

All in all, people were happy with the opportunity to come together and share and learn with one another. Oh, and did I mention the chance to actually “eat” lunch?

Resources
Teaching with Fire: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Teach by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scriber
Leading from Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scriber
Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses by L. Dee Fink
A Self-Directed Guide to Creating Significant Learning Experiences. Dee Fink’s online guide.
The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb. A poem by Sharon Olds.
The Wanderer. A poem by Antonio Machado
The 5 Why’s for Problem Identification

Tags: Adam Mills, Beedie, Kathleen Burke, learning, shauna jones, Teaching, Teaching and Learning Group, teaching seminars

From left to right: Adam Mills, Anjali Bal, Kirk Plangger and Colin Campbell at the Academy of Marketing Science Cultural Perspectives in Marketing Conference.

Four PhD students from the Beedie School of Business played prominent roles at a prestigious Marketing Science conference held in Atlanta, Georgia recently.

Current Beedie PhD students Adam Mills and Kirk Plangger were joined by Beedie PhD alumni Anjali Bal and Colin Campbell at the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Cultural Perspectives in Marketing Conference. The conference ran from August 28 to September 1, with a theme of Thriving in a New World Economy.

The group played a number of important roles at the conference, with all four presenting papers, chairing track meetings and acting as reviewers. Prior to the conference opening, Mills and Plangger were awarded AMS Fellowships, with Plangger also going on to act as Proceedings Editor for the event. Keep reading…

Tags: Academy of Marketing Science, Academy of Marketing Science Cultural Perspectives in Marketing Conference, Adam Mills, Anjali Bal, Colin Campbell, Kirk Plangger, Marketing Science, PhD, Research

For many people, the notion of investing in a business involves an eventual return of capital and ultimate profitability. However, financial gain was the last thing on the mind of Beedie School of Business lecturer and PhD student Adam Mills when he made his latest investment in BBA student projects – ultimately leading to funds raised for children with chronic illnesses and disabilities.

In his Business 478 strategy class, Mills tasked his students with starting up their own businesses. He gave five groups of undergraduate students $100 each from his own pocket as start-up capital in exchange for 15 percent of each business, and told the students they could keep any additional profit.

Mills decided early in the process that hands-on experience was a more engaging way for the students to learn about business strategy than the traditional approach of writing a business plan as a capstone project. Keep reading…

Tags: Adam Mills, Business Strategy, entrepreneurship, Fruit Dealers, PhD

A group of undergrad students from the Beedie School of Business have taken it upon themselves to feed their fellow students – with a focus on healthy eating.

The Fruit Dealers are providing hungry staff and students with healthy and nutritious fruit cups delivered throughout SFU. Each fruit cup is priced at $4, contains three portions of fruit, and is made with the team’s special secret sauce for added flavour.

The team consists of BBA students Ed Wong, Kiran Dhinsa, Steven Ruggles, Jeff Phung, and Jacky Zhang and was formed as part of their Business 478 (Strategy) class with Adam Mills. At the beginning of the class, Adam suggested that each group start a real business on campus. Since then, with support and guidance from Adam, the Fruit Dealers have been working to turn their idea into a sustainable business.

When trying to decide on the nature of their class business, the team wanted to solve a problem faced by lots of students on campus. “During our initial meeting Steven got hungry and pulled out slices of fruit and vegetables,” explains Kiran. “The rest of the team said something to the effect of: ‘That looks really good, I wish I had time to prepare that kind of healthy food every day.’ That was our eureka moment!” Keep reading…

Tags: Adam Mills, Business 478, entrepreneurship, Fruit Dealers, sustainability

A case study from SFU’s Beedie of Business, focused on the long-term business viability of a colourful Twitter success story, has been awarded a top prize at one of Europe’s most noteworthy marketing academic events.

The case study entitled “Marketing S#*t My Dad Says” – authored by Beedie School of Business marketing professor Leyland Pitt, Beedie PhD student Adam Mills, and Phuong Nguyen, Jia-Rong Wu and Aschwin van Alphen-Sato of the Rotterdam School of Management, won the Best Case Study award at the 2011 annual Academy of Marketing Conference at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom this past July.
Keep reading…

Tags: Academy of Marketing, Adam Mills, Justin Halpern, Leyland Pitt, Marketing, social media, Twitter