Business Education is Changing
From small colleges to the largest universities, Business Education is moving to make learning more real.
For both undergraduate and MBA Business students the culminating learning experience is more frequently an actual project for a living, breathing organization.
Facing a Field-Based Capstone Project
Doing by Learning is a roadmap of what Business students need to know and do when faced with a field-based business capstone project. It nicely bridges the gap between students’ success in Business courses and integrating their knowledge through an applied business research project. It does this by, first, helping students understand the WHY of the journey they are undertaking by reflecting on their Business education. Next, groundwork is provided on HOW experiential and work-based learning processes will now be paramount to learning from experience in a real project. Finally, the WHAT is presented through very specific methods to successfully design, research and implement a large and often loosely defined project.
Putting Learning First
This book takes a very student-oriented and “hands-on” approach that captures how learning really happens in today’s organizations. There is a strong emphasis, for example, on students engaging in their own primary research, since so much of work-based learning and decision making happens through social interaction and direct inquiry rather than large population, statistically-driven studies. It does this through the use of the more current, interactive and iterative tools of learning in today’s workplace such as Design Thinking, Action Research, Experiential Learning, Action Learning, Appreciative Inquiry and others.
Experiential and Active Learning
Doing by Learning also includes thirty-five experiential activities designed to make the learning more engaging and fun. While these activities are designed to be self-paced by the reader, they also make perfect assignments in a course or seminar wrapped around the student project itself. Four case studies, inspired by real student projects, are also presented throughout the text to provide living examples of the process.
Efficient Process
The steps and tools in Doing by Learning match today’s fast paced academic environment. Originally designed to accommodate eight week-long online capstone courses, this book is perfect for Business capstone courses that are increasingly offered over shorter timelines and in hybrid, remote or online modes.
“How you see your capstone affects your vision of project success. While the end product of a capstone is almost universally a large written work, defining the work in front of you as a “big paper” does it a disservice. Seeing this, instead, as an opportunity to create positive change and value while being personally transformational is what makes it all worthwhile!”
