Presentation at AEME's Forum

On the 18-19 June I travelled to Huddersfield (Northern England) to attend the 7th AEME Events Management Educators Forum. AEME (Association of Event Management Educators) is an association of educational institutions set up to advance the education of the public in the subject of events and events management. More specifically, it aims to support and raise the profile of the events discipline through the sharing of education and best practice.

This year’s theme was “Continuing Professional Development or Continuing to Develop the Professionals?”. The aim of the forum was to explore the roles, in partnership, that industry and educators have in continuing to develop current and future events professionals, including through continuing professional development. One of the teaching innovations I introduced this academic year was a closer link between the student work and the ‘real’ world and therefore this experience could provide a valuable contribution to the forum’s theme.

The unit is called Leisure Product (Event Innovation from October) and a piece of coursework was designed to meet the objectives of the unit, which revolve around exploring innovation and new product development theory and apply this knowledge to a real organisation. At the same time, the coursework had to give students the opportunity to reflect on their current knowledge of innovation and new product development, with a view to reflect on the key areas of the unit that they think are important with regard to their academic development and future employment.

The coursework involves developing a new event, for which students have to follow a step by-step process, divided in two stages:

• Consultancy report (first term) - The aim of the consultancy report is to identify the company’s current market situation and to identify the gap in the market place.
• Group presentation - The group presentation resembles an executive briefing to the management of the company. This presentation is for students to make a ‘business case’ for the new event they have developed for the company. The presentation follows a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style, where students present the business case in front of ‘dragons’, with a view to obtain their support for its development and launch.

The coursework has now run for 4 years, and over this period many changes have been made following an analysis of student performance. Until last year, groups were free to select the company they wished to employ as their case study. This caused a number of problems. For example, most groups selected companies for which incomplete information was available, hindering their ability to undertake a thorough internal and external analysis of the organisation. From an assessor’s point of view, it also made it difficult to compare student performance given the diversity of organisations and products that resulted from such flexible approach. In one seminar, I could go from wakes at the Golden Hinde (an old boat located in London), to a event at Swizzels Matlow (a candy factory) for former employees, to environmentally friendly weddings at the Eden Project! It is not surprising that at times it was difficult to keep track of all students’ proposals (there were around 25 groups)…

While what we were doing was already interesting and relevant for the students, for 08-09 a number of changes were implemented. One of the most relevant was the allocation of a specific organisation to each seminar group (there were 5 seminar groups of around 30 students each). This change in particular had a tremendous impact on student performance and engagement. Overall, we (me and my colleague Pearl Morrison, who is a co-tutor of the unit) feel that the right ‘formula’ was found. The allocation of an organisation to each seminar group allowed students to visit the organisation’s premises (we selected local companies) at the beginning of the academic year, while accessing detailed information via information packs provided by each organisation (e.g. strategic plans, marketing plans, financial data). In addition, managers of the organisations attended the presentations at the end of the year (they were one of the ‘dragons’). These changes led to students working in a much more ‘real’ context: working with a real organisation, real information and to real dragons.

In order to establish whether the coursework was perceived as an appropriate method for the unit, notably after the implementation of the changes, an evaluation of the experience was made that involved:

• discussions with each of the seminar groups at the end of stage 1.
• An online questionnaire at the end of stage 2
• A brief email interview with the managers of the organisation allocated to each of the five groups

My session at the AEME Forum shared the experience of this unit with participants. The results of the evaluation process were presented at the forum. The main points emerging from the focus group were:

• A sense of satisfaction of completing a consultancy report
• A feeling of relief/satisfaction/pride
• The opportunity to learning some of the theories/models (applicable in the real world)
• More motivated by a real organisation than an ‘imaginary one’
• ‘A chance to be creative’

In summary, the consultancy report was deemed ‘Challenging, interesting & worthwhile’ as well as ‘Useful, stressful & educational’

As far as the questionnaire is concerned (answered by 52% of the students who did the unit):

• 95% said that having a real organisation was very or extremely useful
• Around 80% of students indicated that the coursework has improved their communication & presentation skills, as well as their ability to work in groups.
• The same proportion (80%) said they learnt a lot from the dragons’ feedback (tutors and managers)

Overall students were very pleased with the nature of the work – around 4 out of 5 were satisfied or very satisfied, with the remaining 10% neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. Only 7% were dissatisfied with the coursework.

All managers expressed that they were impressed with students’ effort and found it worth the investment in time. Several managers volunteered to do it again in the future. Some of the business cases were very good. Managers showed excitement about some of the business proposals and some expressed an intention to take some of the ideas forward with the help of students (on a voluntary basis).

Taken together, these results are quite positive. Yet, I am still not happy that 7% of students were unhappy (and a further 10% were not happy). Our own experience and the feedback allowed us to identify areas that need to be addressed and we are hopeful that once implemented they will improve the level of student (and our!) satisfaction with the coursework and the unit.

The experience was deemed relevant enough by the university, which organised a press release covering the dragon’s den presentations. We believe this experience could be relevant to others teaching events (or other business related courses), and therefore we are planning to write a paper about it. I will keep you updated about any developments in this front. Thank you for reading this post till the end!

'Learning & Teaching'

I have been posting mostly about my research and my life, now it is time to close the 'triangle' and talk about my teaching.

I am fairly new to the world of learning and teaching/pedagogy in higher education, despite my 14 year (!) career in higher education. I started my career in higher education in Portugal (where I worked for 10 years) and higher education pedagogy was simply not in the agenda. I did not have to have any teaching qualification to teach in higher education (?!). While I was doing the best I knew and I could, in all honesty I was ‘doing’. The skills or knowledge to reflect on the nature of learning and my own practice were not there. For example, I had never thought about the definition of learning, let alone hearing about concepts such as ‘deep and surface learning’, ‘constructive alignment’ and ‘formative and summative feedback’.

Since I joined Bournemouth University, this has changed dramatically. Learning & Teaching are a central activity for any UK academic institution, and BU is no exception. At the earliest opportunity I enrolled on the Post-Graduate Certificate (PGCert) in Academic Practice, which BU offers for free to all the academic staff (lecturers or support staff). Two years ago (when I did it) it was still optional, now it has become compulsory (if you do not hold a teaching qualification yet).

The PGCert was a fantastic experience and it really opened my eyes to a complete new world. Yet, this new world should not have been new for someone with 10 years experience in higher education. I realised that I had been doing a job (i.e. facilitating student learning) for which I had no training whatsoever! For an academic, who among other things attempts to convince businesses that they should be recruiting individuals with an events management degree because they have been well trained to do the job, it does not look good! In Portuguese we would use the expression “em casa de ferreiro, espeto de pau” (means something like this: "only wooden kebab sticks are used at a blacksmith’s home”).

After successfully completing my PGCert, I become a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. HEA’s mission is to support the sector in providing the best possible learning experience for all students. The HEA commissions a number of reports that they then make available in their website (see resources page). Generally, these are of a very high quality, usually involving reporting on actual pedagogic experiences at UK universities. And the access is free to all (even if you are not a fellow!). From time to time I pay a visit to their site to see what’s new. For those who are looking for inspiration with a view to improve their teaching practice, this site is a good source of information.

Back to the PGCert experience. Since taking this course, I have developed an ongoing interest in learning & teaching issues. The tools learnt during the course helped me to develop an awareness regarding my own pedagogic practice. I am now much more aware of my strengths and weaknesses. And this has been valuable information as it enables me to build on my strengths and work towards improving whatever skills I am lacking. At an attitudinal level, it has also entrenched in my mind the importance of continuously attempting to improve what I do to foster student learning. Actually, I have set myself the goal of introducing a new pegagogic element in my practice every year. My confidence levels improved to the extent that I have now introduced several teaching innovations (for me) in my teaching practice. Examples include:

1. ‘Dragon’s Den’ Experience - involves using ‘real’ tasks and real organisations to improve student learning and motivation
2. Use of banks of comments to improve the quantity and quality of feedback.
3. Use of blogs to enhance students ability to self-assess

I will come back to some of these experiences soon in separate posts.

During the PGCert I had to do a portfolio of teaching and learning, which included a supporting report. In order to illustrate the dramatic impact the course had on me, I employed an analogy to a story I had heard from an ‘old wise man’ who is a very good friend of mine. The morals of the story address three important questions: where I come from, where I am and where I might be in the future as far as my academic practice is concerned.

The story goes like this. A group of humans had been living all their lives in a cavern, which had a little hole at the top. Because it was too high and narrow, they could not see what was going on outside other than shadows. One day, after much effort, one of them manages to get to the top, leave the cavern and see the world outside. The world outside was immense, full of different people, objects and practices. A world he had never imagined. Much different from the ‘single world’ he knew from living in the cavern. Before he left, he was an ‘ignorant’ – he though he had seen everything, he though he new everything. Now, he was in awe and fascinated with what he was seeing. He was ready to explore it, ready to learn what that new world would reveal.

My journey over the past three years at BU is a voyage of enlightening in much the same way as the cavern man’s one. I have climbed the rock and left my previous world, governed by shadows. Like the cavern man’s new world, I know that the learning and teaching world is much wider and richer than the one I knew before embarking on this journey. And it is much richer than the one I know today. You start seeing endless possibilities. Like the cavern man’s new world, after you have seen it, you will no go back to the shadow. You have no other desire than wanting to explore it, seeing what other new worlds are out there. And more importantly, the discovery of a new world leads you to the conclusion that as much as you may be learning exciting new things every day, you know that it is just another 'cavern'. Thus, you just need to climb the wall again and again to discover new worlds. You then realise you still know nothing when compared to what is out there to be learned. At this stage, you’ve become a scientist. You realise you still know nothing (much gthe same as the ignorant), but you are aware of it. Hence you keep climbing walls. You keep learning. As to the ignorant, he remains in the cavern, contemplating the shadows.