Dean’s forum

Citation

Sanyal, R. (2012), "Dean’s forum", American Journal of Business, Vol. 27 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ajb.2012.54027baa.002

Dean’s forum

Article Type: Dean’s forum From: American Journal of Business, Volume 27, Issue 2

In the hypercompetitive world of higher education, academic leaders are striving to provide a high-quality, meaningful, and distinctive education. We want to attract good students and prepare them for the most competitive jobs in the market place by exposing them to a rigorous set of academic and co-curricular programs. At Ball State, a publicly supported regional university in Muncie, Indiana, we have made “immersive learning” the centerpiece of our undergraduate education as our unique way of distinguishing our curriculum and setting it apart from those of other institutions.

What is immersive learning? It is much more than experiential learning as we have traditionally understood it. We have long recognized that experience can play an important role in the learning process. But at Ball State we have expanded the concept of experiential learning, built on it, and integrated it into the fabric of the institution by actively complementing classroom learning with real world, hands-on projects. Immersive learning projects require our students to meet certain standards and requirements. For starters, students must earn academic credit, which means it must be part of a course, and thus embedded in the curriculum. Immersive learning experiences involve projects for an external client – a not-for-profit organization, a business firm, or a government agency – and this ensures that strong bonds are forged between the university and the larger community. The projects engage the students in an active learning process that is student-driven but with the guidance of a faculty mentor. The immersive learning experience typically occurs over a semester which is often preceded by planning and consultation with the client before the semester starts. There is always a tangible product or outcome – a business plan, a policy recommendation, a DVD production, a book, web sites, or a report. Furthermore, the team of students is drawn from multiple disciplines, and I should stress, these are team projects, not individual student assignments. In short, immersive learning melds content, skills, societal need, and student interests into an intense, transformative experience.

The University has created an office, Building Better Communities (BBC), to serve as a portal for external clients who have projects for which they need advice, recommendations, or solutions. BBC works with these potential clients and our faculty to finesse the project parameters, assist with selecting the students to work on each project, and to determine resource needs. For students, these projects expose them to the expectations and demands of a real world client, give them the chance to actually test and apply their knowledge and training from their course work, and require them to work in teams with classmates from disciplines and with perspectives very different to their own. When the project is completed, the results are presented to the client; it is the client who has to be satisfied with the work, not the professor mentoring the experience. This is a high learning bar.

Immersive learning experiences have given our students an edge in the job market. At job interviews and career fairs, employers tell us that students who have done these projects exhibit greater confidence, are better informed, are more articulate, take a more comprehensive approach to issues and problems, and understand business issues more quickly. This is, of course, what we want of our students when they graduate. And for the students themselves, from different majors, the work they need to put into these projects, getting a clear sense of what is expected of them from the client, and coming up with the finished product that meets the client’s expectations and needs, pushes them as few regular classroom experiences can, and greatly broadens their horizons.

Over the years, our students have worked on numerous projects for organizations big and small, public and private. I will mention just a few of them here to give the reader a sense of the variety and scope of the projects. Students worked on designing the retail stores of Vera Bradley, a leader in fashionable, cotton quilted handbags and other accessories, developed a curriculum to address childhood obesity for middle schools with Peyton Manning of the Colts, Marsh Supermarket and St Vincent Hospital, created a system for not-for-profit organizations in Indianapolis to manage their computer and information systems resources, prepared a report on how to increase recycling of bottles in Indiana for Saint Gobain, the French glass manufacturer, drew up a marketing plan to boost attendance at Kurt Vonnegut’s museum in Indianapolis, and designed a transportation terminal in Venice, Italy. The last involved students in finance working with their classmates from architecture and construction management majors.

Organizing immersive learning projects and ensuring that faculty members successfully mentor them understandably requires effort and resources. We have intentionally made available resources to support this and introduced flexibility in the curriculum. In most cases, the client, the external partner, provides a fee for the project. Monies are needed to conduct interviews, visit sites, prepare props, documents and reports, and pay for incidental expenses. Faculty who conduct immersive learning projects are rewarded and recognized – reappointment, tenure and promotion documents acknowledge such work as do salary raises and, as a dean, I have instituted a generous annual award for the faculty member whose project that year is deemed outstanding.

To Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, has been attributed this quote, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” At Ball State, we have embraced this perceptive observation and institutionalized it through immersive learning experiences for our students. We celebrate this fusion between the classroom and the community by having students work on projects that have meaning and a lasting impact. It has made the undergraduate learning experience for our students distinctive and meaningful. And when all is said and done, the evidence shows that these students are hitting the ground running when they graduate. The next time you are shopping at a Vera Bradley store or checking the nutritional information on food items at a Marsh’s Supermarket, or looking at a traveling exhibit of the Kurt Vonnegut museum, remember that an interdisciplinary group of students from Miller College of Business at Ball State University played a big role in them.

Rajib SanyalMiller College of Business, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA. Rajib Sanyal can be contacted at: RNSanyal@bsu.edu