Abstract
Management instructors are continually challenged to create learning activities in online courses that duplicate the same opportunities to develop managerial skills afforded to students in traditional face-to-face courses. The purpose of this experiential exercise is to provide online students an opportunity to develop the soft skills all managers need to be successful in the 21st-century workplace. To do this, we use Kolb’s learning cycle theory to guide students through an experiential learning exercise. Specifically, an online and updated version of a previously published exercise is developed to facilitate student learning through demonstrating organizational behavior and leadership concepts in a group role-play. Instructors teaching organizational behavior and/or leadership courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels will find this exercise applicable to their classes and teaching portfolio. Teaching notes and instructions for conducting the exercise are outlined. All materials necessary for successfully conducting the exercise are provided as are student reactions to the experience.
Keywords
Management instructors are pressed to provide evidence of student mastery of course and program-level learning outcomes. Stakeholders, such as accrediting bodies, university administration, current and prospective students, and potential employers of graduates, have certain expectations regarding the skills a student has developed by successfully completing our courses (Varela, Burke, & Michel, 2013). To complicate matters, online instructors who believe in the experiential learning process must create activities or assignments that ensure students actually experience some phenomena through D. A. Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning cycle—experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting—without ever meeting the students. Our concern with demonstrating assurance of learning in online management courses, specifically organizational behavior and/or leadership courses, centers on the fact that students enrolled in online management courses may not have the opportunity to develop and practice critical managerial skills due to course modality.
Teaching an online course can create new challenges for management instructors. Unlike a traditional class, a virtual classroom environment is established through a Learning Management System (LMS). The LMS site sets the tone for the class by organizing course information, presenting audio and video lectures, providing assignments, and offering communication tools, such as discussion forums and chatrooms. Among our colleagues, we discussed many ways to create an online learning environment that mirrors a face-to-face classroom experience, given the constraints of an online class in our LMS. A comment in one discussion was, “What if we attempted to use a tried-and-true face-to face-experiential exercise but made it such that students were interacting in an asynchronous discussion format?” The comment was an epiphany for us.
We took a previously published experiential exercise designed for a face-to-face classroom experience (Comer, 1993), updated it to include 21st-century workplace issues, and translated it into a ready-to-go experiential exercise for use in online organizational behavior or leadership courses. First, we give a brief overview of Kolb’s experiential learning theory and how it guides our proposed learning experience. Second, we provide details on the exercise parameters and describe the role-play scenario. Third, we frame the teaching notes and instructions by identifying the four steps in D. A. Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning theory and progress through the exercise. Finally, all materials an instructor needs to conduct this exercise are provided in the appendices (available in the supplemental materials online).
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory
D. A. Kolb (1984) and A. Y. Kolb and Kolb (2005) suggest that learning can be explained through a four-step cyclical process. The first step is concrete experience. An individual must be “involved” to learn. The second step is reflective observation, where an individual reflects and analyzes what occurred from both their own perspective and those around them during the experience. In the third step, abstract conceptualization, an individual draws parallels from the experience and makes connections to possible explanations for that experience. In an academic setting, individuals tend to use learned theories for explaining the experience. Finally, in the fourth step, active experimentation, individuals decide how to approach future situations based on newly formed knowledge. Figure 1 demonstrates the experiential learning process, its cyclical nature, and how it relates to this learning exercise.
Kolb’s experiential learning cycle with specific steps relating to this learning exercise.
Student Learning Objectives
The following learning objectives are based on the four steps in Kolb’s theory presented above:
Concrete experience: Actively participate in emotionally charged workplace “meeting” that affects how individuals react with different leadership styles, perceptions, and communication strategies.
Reflective observation: Reflect on the role-play experience from their own perspective as well as the perspectives of their colleagues partaking in the “meeting.”
Abstract conceptualization: Make connections between the role-play experience and knowledge of organizational behavior and leadership theories that can help explain what happened during the role-play.
Active experimentation: Create an action plan to guide future behavior in similar situations.
The Exercise
This exercise is applicable to undergraduate and graduate students in organizational behavior or leadership courses. At least five students are needed to conduct the exercise; additional roles are provided so group size can flex to seven participants, if necessary. Provided the instructor can manage the number of groups, there is no limit to the number of participants. The organizational issues in the role-play should be covered previously in the course to have optimum learning impact. We suggest that leadership, group dynamics, perceptions, conflict, and communication be covered in advance. Because many business students take online courses to complete course work around other obligations, we recommend instructors allow 1 week for students to complete the role-play.
It is our experience that students need to be aware of how much their individual participation contributes to the overall collective success of the team in the role-play. This expectation is emphasized in the student instructions. To ensure a successful experience, we recommend that students log in and participate more than once a day (if possible). At a minimum, we ask students to participate 5 of the 7 days the assignment is available. In addition, students’ first post to the discussion board must be within the first 24 hours of the assignment so that the role-play will get rolling. We emphasize that the more the team participates, the more each student stands to gain from this experience. Many scholars also echo this sentiment when using online discussion boards and structuring online discussions. (For best practices, see Baker, 2011; Bell, 2001; Comer & Lenaghan, 2013; Dean & Fornaciari, 2014; Hrastinski, 2008; Russell & Shepherd, 2010; Vonderwell, Liang, & Alderman, 2007.)
The Role-Play
This role-play exercise is based on Comer’s (1993) face-to-face role-play. The role-scripts were updated to reflect some of the technological changes that have become common within organizations since the publication of the original exercise. Although many of the organizational issues presented in the original exercise are still applicable in today’s workplace, it was necessary to make these changes to reflect issues employees currently face. Examples include the use of e-mail as the primary source of communication between employees and use of social media during work hours.
The role-play takes place within Goodway, a large, urban-based food services company employing roughly 3,000 employees. An organizational chart is provided in Appendix A to provide students with a clear picture of the hierarchy at Goodway. Specifically, five employees within the long-suffering Dining Services department are about to gather for a regularly scheduled weekly meeting. Although Dining Services is a small department, each of the five employees has his or her own perceptions of the organizational issues plaguing the department. Several dynamics are at work within the role-play: general leadership, motivation, group dynamics, perceptions, conflict, and communication.
Turnover is high among first-line supervisors in the department. Competent employees in this group typically leave after cutting their teeth for better-paying jobs in the organization. Employees are unsure if the department manager, Harry, values their contributions to the department. Traditionally, Goodway has viewed the department as a lower priority staff function, and therefore pays supervisors far less than their counterparts elsewhere in the organization. Complicating these issues is Harry’s unexpected resignation from the department. His resignation raises questions about major areas of concern to organizational behavior and leadership students, specifically succession planning, overall change management processes, and communication processes during such changes.
The office layout of the Dining Services department is provided in Appendix B. Throughout the role-play, many characters resent that others receive rewards, such as larger offices or decreased workloads, which are unfair and not commensurate with their productivity and tenure. This visual representation helps students understand how these assumptions could be perceived.
Exercise Instructions
Advanced Preparation
The instructor must complete the following steps prior to starting the role-play:
Step 1
Set expectations regarding participation in the role-play. We recommend several resources for best practices (see Baker, 2011; Bell, 2001; Comer & Lenaghan, 2013; Dean & Fornaciari, 2014; Hrastinski, 2008; Russel & Shepherd, 2010; Vonderwell et al., 2007).
Step 2
Preassign students to a specific group in the online discussion forum. We have had success using either previously established student teams or random group assignments. There are five role-scripts in this exercise; therefore, the ideal group will have five members. However, to allow every student to participate and have individual performance assessed, groups of six or seven students also work. All roles, including duplicate roles, are provided in Appendix C.
Step 3
Create the discussion groups within your LMS.
Step 4
Once groups are assigned, e-mail an information packet to each student through the LMS. Each information packet consists of the organizational chart in Appendix A, the office layout in Appendix B, one randomly assigned role-script from Appendix C, and the role-play instructions from Appendix D. A sample draft of the e-mail that accompanies each information packet is provided in Appendix E.
Conducting the Exercise
Part I: Concrete Experience
At this point, the role-play can begin. As the role-play progresses during the assigned week, the instructor should monitor each group’s postings but should not interfere in any group’s discussion. Because this exercise is designed to evoke many different emotions, instructors should expect to see a few heated exchanges. At the conclusion of the role-play, we ask students to complete Part I in the accompanying student assignment (see Appendix F). This step asks students to provide an account of what happened in their group experience. The following is an excerpt from a student assignment:
From the start, people wanted to settle unfinished business. The focus slowly shifted from running an operation to a personal complaint meeting. People started to express how they feel and began pointing fingers very quickly.
Part II: Reflective Observation
The debrief of the exercise is done individually through the structured reflection journal entry assignment in Appendix F. We have found that this approach provides a rich opportunity for students to ponder the experience from multiple perspectives: theirs and their colleagues in the “meeting.” We provide probing questions so that students can progress through a guided discovery of what was learned. The following is an excerpt from a student assignment:
Les made the department members feel as though they didn’t have a voice by being condescending in some of his responses towards the members. His actions resulted in members withdrawing from participation because they didn’t want to be shot down.
Part III: Abstract Conceptualization
Part III of the assignment has students reflect on specific occurrences related to leadership, group dynamics, and perceptions/communication in the role-play and identify associated organizational behavior or leadership theories that may help explain their experience. The assignment continues by asking students to draw conclusions about this particular learning experience and how it could apply to real-world organizations. Specifically, we ask students to identify the similarities and differences between the role-play and a real workplace meeting involving conflict. In the reflection assignment, one student made the connection between equity theory and the consequences of perceived inequity in the workplace:
I believe Scott’s workplace conduct using company property, and potential rumors of his biased hiring into the organization, and work equity issues between the two department secretaries. Conflict was handled openly with each team member offering a possible solution.
Part IV: Active Experimentation
This portion of the assignment allows students to think about similar situations they may encounter in the future and create an action plan to help guide their behavior. We ask students to craft recommendations to help solve similar issues in the future and identify specific skills necessary to be successful in those encounters. The following is an excerpt from a student assignment:
Les was very proactive in the beginning of the meeting and wanted to hear each individual out. I think he did a good job in providing feedback to their responses. One thing I feel that could have been changed is that maybe Les offered too much initially in the meeting which caused it to get a little out of hand.
Overall, this role-play adapted for the online classroom provides instructors with another tool for their pedagogy toolbox. The exercise gives students an untraditional approach to develop and practice critical managerial skills in the online classroom.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
References
Supplementary Material
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