Faculty: Experiment, Rethink, Redesign, and Develop an Attitude of Continuous Improvement

Cara Putman

08-16-2024

At the Daniels School of Business, one of our pillars for our undergraduate programs is experiential learning. For years I wrestled with how to turn a core undergraduate business course into anything but a lecture-based, drink from a firehose, overwhelming class. I would participate in programs and symposiums presented by Purdue’s Center for Instructional Excellence and think active learning works great when you have a small, seminar-style class. But I’m teaching sections of 70 students. I wanted to connect students to the content in a way that they could see why we required it, but more importantly, how it mattered to them.

I recently returned from the Academy of Legal Studies in Business’ 100^th conference. While there I presented our ethics work, and it was great to engage with colleagues from around the country and world about what we are doing. I also participated in a colloquium designed to take what I’ve developed and presented at conferences and prepare it for publication so more faculty can adopt and adapt what I’ve learned and incorporated in my classes into theirs. Any class can evolve to become more experiential with a strong active-learning component, one activity at a time.

How can faculty do this? Here are a few suggestions.

• Enter each class with an eye to experimentation. Be willing to try something with your students and test whether it works. Then tweak it the next time you teach that class.
• Collect those tested exercises and compile them into a larger simulation. Tell a cohesive story that builds for the students so they can see connections across the course content.
• Be willing to rethink and redesign your course for the purpose of telling that larger story. The way the content is organized in the textbook may not be the best structure. In fact, it likely is not, so use the text, but use it in a way that serves your teaching and your students.
• Develop an attitude of continuous improvement. Each semester you can add to and adapt the exercises you’ve created. I’ve been developing the simulation exercises since 2017. I’m still adapting them. It keeps the content fresh for me, and allows me to learn from what works for the students and what doesn’t. It also allows me to invite the students into the learning process. I get to model what it means to be a learner – even at this stage in my career. That’s a critical lesson for them to absorb in this era of lightning-fast technology innovation and evolution.

There’s much more I could share, but if you start with these suggestions, you can begin transforming a lecture-heavy course and developing opportunities to invite students into a more engaged and active learning process. You might just discover that the student evaluations at the end of the semester say things like, “I didn’t want to take this class, but it’s now the favorite class I’ve taken at Purdue and this is the favorite professor I’ve had.”