Stephanie, Doc, Dick and all :
Concerning the questions you have raised, I think it can be useful to
describe my experience trying to create an LO at the University
(undergraduate) level.
I would appreciate your comments and insights on that experience. And
also hear about other experiences on applying LO concepts at school level.
I am a consultant on "Information System Management", specially, IS
Strategic Planning (ISSP, for short) and Manager of a small consulting
firm.
For the last 3 years I am also an Invited Professor in the "Departmant of
Informatics Engeneering" at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. ( I know
you find the name of the Department a bit strange; it is written in a
sort of an "EEC Common English" ...).
Please note : I am not a Professor that does consultancy; I am a
professional Manager and Consultant that is acting as a Professor for some
time. Note also that being a consultant os ISSP, means being a consultant
on "Organizational Change through the use of IS"... Note finally that due
to the type of Department we make intensive use of computer technology -
this is not essencial, but it helps.
I teach the pratical part of a class on "ISSP", a class on "Society,
Profession and Ethics" and also a two term course on Management, for the
4th year ( of a 5 year) undergraduate course. I will refer only to the
Management course where the LO ideias have been more used.
I am not teaching mainly "Management concepts"; I am trying to teach
engineering students how to do "organizational work" and "how to manage".
In order to do that they have to learn management concepts, of course. But
the "focus" is not there. In fact, the focus is on "organizing and
managing" projects; "management concepts" are learnt from ( or in relation
with) that experience.
In the Practical classes" ( and in a lot more of off-class time) students
do, mainly in first term, the following 2 activities.
- the all class ( aprox. 40 students) will act as the "Organizational
Committee" of a Conference on "Management and IT" that takes place in
March or April. This is a project that is complex and big enough to imply
many sub-groups, coordination problems, and several levels of management.
You can see the web page of the 2nd event of this type, organized in 1998
( with english translation) in :
( in "Archive" you can also find the web page of the first event,
1997 ( portuguese only)
- study an article on management, prepare a presentation, present it and
discuss it with the class, prepare a written report ( that will be
distributed to the other students, and used as bibliography in the
following years), and put the same report acessible on the Web.
You can see these summaries ( portuguese only) in :
clicking on "forum-gestao" and then on "textos" ( classical articles on
Management have been discussed in 1997; "Didactic" tests in 1998 - yes,
you are right, this gives a lot of work to the teachear, because he can
not use the same articles in the following year, as the summaries are
already on the Web... - I accept suggestions for the articles to use this
coming year...)
Students are evaluated based on their performance on those activities.
There are neither test, nor examinations, because the answers to those
would not be reusable for further learning.
In the second term, students have a lot of options, and they have to
select the activities they will do ( and will be evaluated for). They have
to choose at least two activities from a list that includes :
- propose and organize a smaller public Project in groups of 3-5 ( they
have organized events like a programming competition, a cinema exhibition,
etc - there are links to the page of some of this events in the pages
referred ).
- study and present in the class ( and/or in writing) articles, books, and
chapters of the theoretical content of the course;
- study a book on Management and make an "investigation dissertation" on
that ( Khun, Senge, Osborn ( Reinventing Gouvernment) and Mintzberg have
been some of the authors choosed ).
- make a proposal to create an enterprise ( this proposals ARE NOT made
public - in fact this is the only activity that is not reused - but it is
useful for the students).
Many of this studies are also on the Web, in the Management page, or in
the pages of the students and have a link in the Management page.
Theoretical classes develop management concepts that are needed either to
organize the Projects ( Project Management, group work, Company creation,
etc) or whose comprehension is made possible by the project work that the
students have previously organized; "enlarging" the project management
concepts to understand Management of Organizations ( companies, namely) is
one of the subjects discussed in the second term.
Some other points must be referred :
- apart from an "Intranet" inside the Web page of the "Encontro" ( to
discuss internally the organization of the project ) we use two mailing
lists to support class activities ( "pg" for the first term and "ge" for
the second) and an open mailing list, "forum-gestao" ( that you can
subscribe) to discuss "Management questions"
[ these mailing lists ( as all the mailing lists of the Department) can
be accessed at
http://www.dei.uc.pt/majordomo
( that has also a search engine that allows you to search ( "pesquisa")
by keyword(s). )]
- some students of the 5th year, who have organized the previous
conference, act as "consultants" of the new Organization Committee. Also,
all the "materials" prepared for the previous conference can be used by
the new organizers - this allows to simulate a real life organization, and
helps the new organizers to go further than the old ones, enriching the
event and the experience;
- A "Management Lab" has been created to further stimulate management
tasks and thinking, and allows for 5th year students to continue
organizing events ( a half day "Management Seminar" and an half day
"Technical Seminar" run each month with external speakers;
- Teachers of other subjects are involved in chairing sessions of the
Conference; the staff of the Department is involved in "support tasks" for
the conference, and the other teachers and students are involved through
participating in the events. This is creatingig a new dinamic and
progressively ( I hope) will allow for the LO to expand to other parts of
the Department.
Keep in touch : the experience will now run for its third year. Comments,
suggestions and criticisms are welcome as weel as sharing with similar
experiences elsewhere.
Best regards
Artur
[Host's Note: Thanks, Artur, for this msg. To read any of the Portuguese
pages in translation, 1) Copy the URL, 2) go to
http://babelfish.altavista.com/cgi-bin/translate?
3) Paste the URL into the box, 4) Select Portugese to English, and 5) hit
"Translate". ...Rick]
--"Artur F. Silva" <artsilva@individual.eunet.pt>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>