When I taught Principles of Management and Organizational Behavior in Fall 2018, I took a very applied approach to the content in which I utilized practitioner-based articles rather than a traditional textbook. As well, I incorporated guest speakers throughout the term to help bring the concepts to life for students and make them tangible in a variety of different organizational contexts.
Overall, the feedback received from students was positive.
- “Bringing in the day in the life guest speakers allowed me to connect what we learn in class to real life examples.”
- “Dr. Easter had well organized presentations and tons of interactive activities that gave us first-hand experience of the material. There were many class discussions. There was also a large group project at the end.”
- “She created real life scenarios that made us think through things and apply the concepts that we learned in that specific section. Our team discussions in class were helpful because they helped us foster collaborative ideas and learn new ideas and perspectives from each other. I also enjoyed that this wasn’t a lecture class, but very hands on and interactive”
Most of the student suggestions for improvement centered on adding a mid-term exam; they also suggested that I try to focus on key concepts versus introducing a variety of concepts per each topic area and moving through the materials pretty quickly.
- “I think that maybe helping us feel more prepared for the final would be something she could improve on”
- “There is only one final that is comprehensive and I don’t really like this, because I have no idea what her tests are like/ I think maybe giving a midterm test would help us better prepare for the final comprehensive exam”
- “Not go as quick during lectures”
I taught this class again in Fall 2020. A mid-term exam was added, which seemed to help mitigate students’ expectations and concerns in preparation for taking the final exam. I also tried to be more cognizant of the key material I wanted to introduce to students throughout the course rather than trying to superficially introduce a myriad of different management and organizational behavior concepts.
- “Dr. Easter did a great job teaching students about management. She has a lot of real-world experience and made it easy for students to apply what they are learning to what happens in the real world. Bringing in guest speakers was a great asset to this class.”
- “She was always energetic, never monotone, and just the class atmosphere within itself was inviting. She did everything right with guest speakers, hands on activities, group activities, and etc.”
- “She made the course material realistic and practical”
The suggestions for improvement from students centered on rethinking some of the assignment deliverables, which I will certainly take into consideration when I teach this course again.
- “I think the quizzes were very hard and sometimes asked very confusing questions. Overall the whole class was good the quizzes were the only thought assignment with very long readings with a lot of material”
- “She could have more written assignments to help retain the information better”
- “There were numerous kinds of assignments such as a paper, group projects and presentations which I thought was good. I struggled the most on the reading quizzes because the articles were hard to read were fairly long and I had a hard time recalling specific content from just a handful of questions”
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