Thoughts on the MBA Roundtable (MBAR) Annual Symposium

by | Nov 16, 2015 | Written Posts

roundtable

Recently EduSourced joined the MBA Roundtable’s Affiliate Sponsor Program and I attended last month’s Annual Symposium, “Closing the Gap: Cultivating Communication Competencies in the MBA,” hosted by the Olin School Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

While the theme of the symposium was teaching communication competencies to MBAs, it was evident from the sessions and discussions that school-wide curriculum collaboration is an emerging trend, yet fraught with unique challenges, on b-school campuses. I enjoyed learning more about two schools that are doing this effectively:

  • Critical Thinking@Olin. Launched in 2011, the Olin School of Business initiative was awarded the first MBA Roundtable Innovators Award. Critical Thinking@Olin facilitates collaboration across the curriculum through a set of processes students learn once and are expected to reiterate across multiple courses with multiple faculties. In this case, the entire business school works together, centralized through the Communication@Olin program, to design a collaborative curriculum for all their degree programs
  • Florida Atlantic University’s communication program is now being delivered in a consistent manner across their curriculum as well. In their model, students learn one standard for communicating clearly in writing and orally and are then judged by that consistent standard in their course assignments across the curriculum. Over time this has evolved to acknowledge there are different industry standards for communication in, for example, accounting, than other topics and so the program has been adjusted accordingly. Significant faculty collaboration has been necessary for this program to work and to be effective.

In reflecting on my time at the Symposium learning about the different models and challenges b-schools face regarding curriculum collaboration, I’m struck by how hard it is with traditional courses to deliver this synthesis effectively and how even more challenging it would be to collaborate in the delivery of project-based learning.

This reinforces the reasons why we created EduSourced, a central resource that makes it easy to communicate about your experiential program(s) with other faculty/staff across the delivery system. And, as the MBAR Annual Symposium shows so effectively, sharing insights from your program about the impact it makes on student development is valuable information that can be used to drive further curriculum innovations at your school and other schools.

Thanks to Olin and Associate Dean Joe Fox for hosting the event!

EduSourced is proud to be an Affiliate Sponsor of the MBA Roundtable and is pleased to be included in the effort to expand their resource base, and support the efforts to better inform and inspire MBA curricular and program innovations.

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