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A key requirement for effective research on pedagogy and course redesign is a credible measure (or measures) of student learning on completion of individual modules or even specific teaching initiatives. This has proved difficult to achieve for business courses for some subjects - in particular for the teaching of soft skills such as team working. Traditional methods such as examinations are inappropriate. This paper reports on a novel approach to the evaluation of an exercise, designed to develop business students’ skill of managerial intuition. Changing business conditions are placing a greater value on managers’ ability to deal with open-ended complex (wicked) problems. One academic stream of work has identified that managerial intuition is the key to handling such problems effectively. This, like all skills, can best be acquired through practice. An exercise designed to give small teams of students experience of such a problem was designed for a module delivered during the 1st year of a business degree at Business SchoolX. In parallel students were required to carry out both team and individual reflections that focused on the learning achieved on this exercise. Since the reflective practice was required and marked this ensured that we obtained a comprehensive response from almost all students on the course. Reflective practice can be anonymised and draws on an individual’s most deeply held thinking. This year (2015/16) is the first attempt at carrying out an evaluation exercise of this type. The paper reports on the preliminary results from the Autumn Term module.

This paper explores the scope for using reflective logs as a component in final year projects taken by students on an undergraduate management course. Students often wish to build practical experience into the final year of their degree, but th ey are also expected to carry out a certain amount of independent research as part of a final year. There can be a tension between students⠒ desire for experience and the requirement for research. The context of this is a management degree where a sig nificant piece of independent work is regarded as a crucial component of the course, but where an unintended consequence of framing this piece of work in a way that encourages autonomy among students, is that there is some ambiguity about quite what stude nts are expected to deliver. An observation made by some of the markers of these projects is that it is not uncommon for them to read like good consultancy reports, which do demonstrate the students⠒ writing skills and often prepare them for their futu re careers, but which do not necessarily score highly against the criteria associated with a major academic piece of work. Within the author⠒s institution some thought has been given to providing alternative forms of project, and a tangible move in this direction has been to introduce an option where some students combine their project with working alongside an organisation on a practical task. For these students an integral part of the process is the requirement that they maintain a reflective log on their work, following the principles of Schon (1983) in framing and reframing questions to elicit knowledge based on the students⠒ experience. One interpretation of this is that the reflective log can constitute part of the primary data that the stud ents draw on in their research. Such an approach has clear attractions for students and academic supervisors alike. There are well defined formats which a reflective log can follow and which can foster experiential learning (Moon, 2004). Because this type of project is based on practical activities

Much recent discussion in higher education has focused on the scope that exists to provide personalisation to students. This influences a range of factors, spanning the expectations that students have of the learning environment, the styles and methods used by lecturers, the need to deliver very specialist material to students, and the type of technological infrastructure that is adopted to support learning. For example, some viewpoints suggest that electronic resources to support learning should be delivered through a ‘personal learning environment’, as distinct from the currently familiar ‘virtual learning environment’, the implication being that personalisation is built into the learning environment as a core component. For teaching research methods, a personalised approach is attractive because students can be expected to vary in what approaches to research they are likely to use in other areas of their studies. Typically students want to make clear choices about exactly what research methods they learn. Furthermore there are particular variations in the extent to which students already have some experience of conducting their own research, and in the ease with which student are likely to adapt to a research mindset where they can deal with the demands of independent inquiry. For many students research is an individual pursuit, and indeed for students on undergraduate or taught postgraduate courses which include a major project, a piece of independent research is the most significant item of individual work within their course. Therefore this paper raises the question of whether research training needs to be as personalised as research itself. If it appropriate to prepare students for a major piece of research, where they will be choosing their own research methods, through a didactic course which covers a standard range of methods? Is it - in fact - essential that students are exposed to a wide range of research methods including those that they have no intention of ever using? The need to provide a range of skills and knowledge, and the possibilities to adapt this to students’ requirements, constitute only one facet of personalisation. Another is the ability to adjust material to differing prior levels of expertise, and to help students in finding the most effective path to achieve the necessary learning. While students are unlikely to enter higher education with any significant exposure to academic research methods, some of them will have carried out activities that have resonances with the research process. So there is considerable scope for inviting students to identify the most appropriate level at which to start learning research techniques. The intention is to identify some general principles for the personalisation of research methods learning and to discuss in what circumstances these might be relevant.