Concerns and Expectations of Students Participating in Study Abroad Programs: Blogging to Reveal the Dynamic Student Voice

Study abroad programmes (SAP) have become increasingly popular with university students and within academia. They are often seen as an experiential opportunity to expand student learning and development, including increases in global, international, and intercultural competences. However, despite the increasing popularity of and participation in study abroad programmes, many student concerns and uncertainties remain. This research investigates initial pre-departure concerns and apprehensions of students undertaking a one-semester study abroad programme and uses these as context for an examination of violated expectations of students during their programme. The research uses interpretative phenomenological analysis to interpret data collected from regularly-updated blogs composed by students throughout their SAP experience. The process of using blogs to collect data is less formalised than many other approaches of interpretative phenomenological analysis, enabling ‘in the moment’ feedback during the SAP and lending greater depth to the understanding of student perceptions.

Reprint: Learning With a Strategic Management Simulation Q2 Game: A Case Study

The use of simulation games as a pedagogic method is well established though its effective use is context-driven. This study adds to the increasing growing body of empirical evidence of the effectiveness of simulation games but more importantly emphasises why by explaining the instructional design implemented reflecting best practices. This multimethod study finds evidence that student learning was enhanced through the use of simulation games, reflected in the two key themes; simulation games as a catalyst for learning and simulation games as a vehicle for learning. In so doing the research provides one of the few empirically based studies that support simulation games in enhancing learning and, more importantly, contextualizes the enhancement in terms of the instructional design of the curriculum. This research should prove valuable for those with an academic interest in the use of simulation games and management educators who use, or are considering its use. Further, the findings contribute to the academic debate concerning the effective implementation of simulation game-based training in business and management education.

Applying Enterprise: Active Learning Environments for Business Higher National Diploma Students

This article details an approach to teaching entrepreneurship to Higher National Diploma (HND) students that combines lecture-based and experiential learning processes to increase student learning, comprehension, and entrepreneurial skills. A UK university redesigned an entrepreneurship course to have students design and implement business plans for a pop-up shop and an event in the local community, while working closely with instructors and outside stakeholders. The lectures used in the lessons were designed to complement the enterprise activities and be immediately applied in group work settings. Data was collected from student reflections and analyzed against instructor reflections to highlight both the success and challenges of this approach, as well as any areas of dissonance between student and instructor observations. While literature on the benefits of active and experiential learning processes are highlighted in the literature, this article examines these teaching methods specifically in a HND context, an area in which research on the benefits of these teaching methods for developing entrepreneurial students and for developing students prepared for undergraduate education has been limited.

The Moderating Effects of Emotions on Cognitive Skills

An important challenge in higher education today is the growing tutor -student ratio that diminishes the ‘human touch’. As learning and teaching is ultimately an interpersonal process, this will lead to student discontent and impact on the ir learning. Whilst there is little that teaching practitioners can do in terms of the growing student numbers they have to tutor , they may however influence student learning by enhancing their positive emotions. This study examines the importance of emotion s in improving cognitive skills and how it interacts with knowledge and reflection. This research contributes to theory by examining the role of emotions as a moderating factor in the lear ning process. Our findings reveal that emotions moderate the direct relationship between knowledge and cognitive skills , and the indirect relationship between knowledge and cognitive skills via reflection. The findings demonstrate the critical role that emotions play in student learning. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.