Tag Archives: news
Blended learning and flipped classrooms in first year Business School units
The first year experience here at the Business School is undergoing a significant transformation in 2015. Although each of the unit co-ordinators are taking slightly different approaches, they all have in common the desire to move away from the traditional ‘two lectures, one tutorial’ model of learning that has prevailed at universities for the better part of two centuries. But what exactly does this entail, why have we done it, and what’s in it for you as students?
In the first year Microeconomics class that I am co-ordinating this year, the main difference is an increased focus on an active approach to learning, centred primarily on workshops. These workshops now run for two hours, as opposed to the one hour tutorial in previous years. This is because we believe that one of the best ways of learning comes through doing, rather than passive listening, and through interaction with your peers. There is, therefore, a heavy emphasis in these workshops on group work, where small teams all discuss the material at hand, with guidance from the facilitator/tutor. Indeed, this is one of the key aspects of the workshops in Microeconomics.
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Ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility are an important part of any business education, and from my perspective, so much so that I’ve personally been designing and delivering dedicated courses in these areas for nearly two decades.
Consequently, it was only natural for me to drive the UWA Business School’s application to become a signatory to the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative.
The PRME initiative is the first organised relationship between the United Nations and management-related academic institutions, business schools, and universities from around the world. Currently, close to 600 leading business schools and management-related academic institutions from more than 80 countries are signatories of PRME.
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Welcome to my second Dean’s blog!
I recently attended meetings of Business School Deans in Europe and the US. A key issue at both of them was the impact that technology is having on the workforce, and, by extension, on education.
Andrew McAfee, an MIT computer scientist, delivered a keynote address at the US conference on huge strides that have been made recently in computers’ abilities to take on tasks that to date have only been possible when performed by people. An example is the rise of driverless cars. Firms such as Google have made enormous progress in developing both the hardware and software necessary for driverless cars to safely navigate on public roads.
