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Vision statements in organizations help CEOs provide focus and direction to a company's activities and motivate employees toward improved performance. This article explores if an instructor can use a vision statement to overcome course design challenges and motivate students toward improved learning and then presents a process used for developing and implementing vision statements into business courses. Using a pre-and-post design to evaluate student's learning and performance improvements, preliminary results support the use of course visions in designing courses and show improvements in student learning. The challenges encountered in implementing course vision statements are also discussed.

The AACSB 2020 business standards update provides a "principle-based" approach to the continuous improvement process for a business school. This approach provides great flexibility for business schools to define faculty sufficiency and maintenance of faculty qualifications in a way that is congruent with their mission and expectations for faculty performance. In the following discussion, we dispel the folklore associated with faculty sufficiency and qualifications (Standard 3). Moreover, we provide a step-by-step process to guide business school administrators in maximizing guideline ratios related to the standard. Finally, examples are provided to illustrate specific strategies for navigating the standard.

Students attracted to quantitative disciplines of study can be reluctant to devote much attention to the critical task of communicating, and previous research (Hostager, 2018) has identified statistically significant differences in learning approaches by major among undergraduate business students. This paper presents results of learning assurance for writing skills (direct measures) even when the course content relates to the highly quantitative topics of data analytics and finance. The approach combines various pedagogical methods in an undergraduate, writing-intensive setting: traditional testing in an iterative framework, "flipped classroom" intensive work using spreadsheet software, repeated submission of brief papers incorporating analytical finance work, and student research presentations (including at an undergraduate research conference). We present quantitative and qualitative data demonstrating assurance of learning for evaluation purposes, including the recently announced (2020) competency-based Assurance of Learning standards from the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). To assess the robustness of our findings, we also report results using alternate learning resources (old and new) and delivery methods (in-person, hybrid, fully online), taking advantage of the pandemic natural experiment. We found that learning progress was assured in each context for hybrid and fully online delivery; however, learning was not as monotonic as for fully in-person implementation.

Learning statistics can be challenging for many students, due to their inability to engage in statistical reasoning and application of techniques. This challenge becomes compounded in online learning contexts where students are spatially and temporally separated from the teacher. This paper describes and explains a case of theory-driven interventions designed to enhance the learning experiences of students enrolled in two similar business statistics units, one for undergraduate and the other for postgraduate programs. The paper based its claims primarily on the analysis of data from a student evaluation of teaching survey. This study affirmed the importance of a pedagogy-first approach. It argued that the interventions, which were effective in enhancing the student learning experience, were underpinned by a robust pedagogical analysis of the teaching and learning issues using both constructive alignment and transactional distance theory lenses.

The aim of the study is to examine the effectiveness of blended learning in encouraging course interaction amongst first-year students studying a business communication module. The COVID19 pandemic resulted in the increased use of blended learning as a teaching approach to encourage learning regardless of the location. Existing research on blended learning suggests its value in promoting increased student engagement, ultimately contributing to positive educational outcomes. Data was collected through a cross-sectional survey whereby a questionnaire was distributed to the respondents using Google Forms. Data was analysed on the same platform. Cross-tabulation was used to understand the relationships between factors in participants' responses to the questions. Results indicate that blended learning successfully drives course interaction because the combination of class-based and online engagement positively impacts how likely students are to engage in course content. This paper makes a valuable contribution in the form of underscoring a pressing need for research that is aimed at understanding how blended learning shapes the experiences students have with their modules, as well as how these factors may shape current practices in blended learning. Most students indicated that they would recommend blended learning as it increased participation and engagement with their course content.

Critical thinking, creativity, communication, teamwork, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, empathy, resilience, ambition, grit, and innovation (Heckman & Kautz, 2012). These skills, often referred to as 'soft' skills, are considered a requirement for employment and advancement for the 21st-century graduate (Carnevale & Smith, 2013). Within a Western Canadian School of Business, in an environment highly regarded for technical skill achievement in diploma and degree graduates, faculty set out to investigate the absence or inclusion of human skills in curriculum outcomes as an initial phase of investigation. There is an institutional presumption that human skill development is innately a part of the programs. The intention is that human skills (LeBusque, 2020) or power skills (PMI, 2022) naturally occur during course delivery, creating a commonality across foundational courses to reinforce the skill sets identified, developed, and refined as students complete their credentials. However, industry reports (Lapointe & Turner, 2020; RBC, 2019) and the authors' own institutional data collected from new graduates and employers indicated room for improvement in these skills. To gain a better understanding, the authors undertook an examination via document analysis of all common core courses that form the program foundation. Through the lens of dynamic skill theory (Mascolo, 2020), this evaluation involved 24 common courses, comprised of 1,442 course objectives, resulting in a range of 134 Bloom's Taxonomy verbs. In this paper, the authors begin the exploratory first phase of a broader comprehensive study with a focus on course foundations for learner development. Through this analysis, the authors present a draft framework to better understand and strengthen the learning foundations, to proceed with considerations for realignment and strategic scaffolding of both technical and human skills from entry through graduation.

The much-discussed "relevance gap" (Starkey & Madan, 2001) between research and practice in management is a major source of concern for business schools, in terms of their legitimacy in the eyes of students, employers, and funding bodies. We frame the relevance gap as a knowledge-transfer issue, focusing on the role of "bridging media" as one mechanism through which academic research is made accessible to practicing managers. Specifically, we ask two questions: (1) Which academic research is selected for dissemination by bridging media? And (2) How can we develop better ways of measuring this type of bridging activity? Through a preliminary empirical analysis (of the citation trails from 264 academic papers to bridge journals such as Sloan Management Review), we find that academic papers cited in bridge journals: (1) also have a high academic impact factor; (2) draw on and/or contribute to a broad body of literature; (3) are more likely to be inductive or theoretical than deductive; and (4) are on topics rated by practitioners as "interesting." We also discuss how our methodology could be extended to contribute to Aguinis et al.' s (2014) pluralist conceptualization of scholarly impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to validate a data collection tool's psychometric properties to explore whether business management research's relevance is a high-order construct made up of its perceived interest and perceived relevance. The authors conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to validate a two-factor scale. The sample was composed of 148 MBA students from a Peruvian business school. Results showed the appropriate levels of validity and reliability and confirmed the usefulness of this data set for exploring the relationship between perceived interest and relevance. Businesses and schools can replicate the validated tool for reviewing their curricula and teaching practices, exploring the gap between business and management research results and advancing managers' research literacy and evidence-based practice in business education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]