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I am teaching the MBAs two courses: Organizational Behavior. Every year I break my head about the First Session! Usually I want to provide the students a glimpse of how the course is going to be - videos (for eg. In Pursuit of Happyness, 36 Chamber of Shaolin, Karate Kid, East or West etc), Graffiti exercise ( Schermerhorn's), Caselet discussions bringing out the course contents, BINGO .... 

Dear Viji,

The first class of OB is always very challenging especially when you are standing in front of undergrads. I tried something new in my first class this week. This time I used inside-out approach. I divided the board in three equal parts. I wrote my first question on the first part and asked student to make a list of three answers of up to three words. After giving them 5 minutes for coming up with their responses, I asked them all to keep coming down in a row and just write one response on the first part of the board. I told them that if you see your response on the board already written by someone else, you write your second best response. The question was: What do organizations expect from their employees?

After that, I wrote my second question on the second part of the board and asked them to repeat the same. This time my question was: What do employees expect from their organizations?

After that, I wrote my third question that was a bit tricky: What can managers do to create a win-win situation?

I was shocked to see that almost 80% of OB's major topics were right there on the board. The most surprising thing was that OB was their first ever management course. With this exercise, I learned that I have many common grounds to move on.  Now, I just need to connect theories and practices to what they already know. Simple! Isn't it? :)

Kind regards,

Ameer A. Basit, PhD

Assistant Professor

School of Business and Economics

University of Management and Technology

C-II Johar Town, Lahore, PAKISTAN

They know more than we give them credit for...and only need  a sructured framework of activity provided for them to demonstrate what they know. We can then guide the structuring of this information so derived, into our curriculum frame.

Sincerely

Dr John

On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 9:11 PM, Dr. Ameer A. Basit <ameerbasit@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Viji,

The first class of OB is always very challenging especially when you are standing in front of undergrads. I tried something new in my first class this week. This time I used inside-out approach. I divided the board in three equal parts. I wrote my first question on the first part and asked student to make a list of three answers of up to three words. After giving them 5 minutes for coming up with their responses, I asked them all to keep coming down in a row and just write one response on the first part of the board. I told them that if you see your response on the board already written by someone else, you write your second best response. The question was: What do organizations expect from their employees?

After that, I wrote my second question on the second part of the board and asked them to repeat the same. This time my question was: What do employees expect from their organizations?

After that, I wrote my third question that was a bit tricky: What can managers do to create a win-win situation?

I was shocked to see that almost 80% of OB's major topics were right there on the board. The most surprising thing was that OB was their first ever management course. With this exercise, I learned that I have many common grounds to move on.  Now, I just need to connect theories and practices to what they already know. Simple! Isn't it? :)

Kind regards,

Ameer A. Basit, PhD

Assistant Professor

School of Business and Economics

University of Management and Technology

C-II Johar Town, Lahore, PAKISTAN

On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 10:14 PM, Viji Venkatraman <vijivenkatraman@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all

I am teaching the MBAs two courses: Organizational Behavior. Every year I break my head about the First Session! Usually I want to provide the students a glimpse of how the course is going to be - videos (for eg. In Pursuit of Happyness, 36 Chamber of Shaolin, Karate Kid, East or West etc), Graffiti exercise ( Schermerhorn's), Caselet discussions bringing out the course contents, BINGO .... 

I want to do something different this time - would be grateful for any suggestions. I'll collate the responses and send it to the group. 

Thanks a lot. 

Warm regards

Viji

V.Vijayalakshmi, PhD

Assistant Professor (OB)

Department of Management Studies

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Chennai, INDIA

Harvard's Power & Influence Simulation

Experience Point's ExperienceChange simulation

The Organizational Change Game by Janet Near

I was looking for other options for a simulation module in the course.  I will be teaching this course ground and then on-line.  I am especially interested if you have a simulation that has worked well in a fully on-line environment, as this is a new mode for me for this course.  

I appreciate the assistance. 

Rita 
Rita Shea-Van Fossen, PhD
Associate Professor of Management
Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship
Nova Southeastern University
3301 College Avenue, Office DeSantis 5122
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314
 
Office Email: r.shea@nova.edu

Have you heard of Change Pro? It was developed by INSEAD faculty, and is available from learningways.com. I'd certainly give it a try.

Best regards,

Anca

On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 4:49 PM, Rita VanFossen <rita_vanfossen@msn.com> wrote:

I am revising a Change Management course and looking for options for a simulation to use.  I am very familiar with the following simulations: 

Harvard's Power & Influence Simulation

Experience Point's ExperienceChange simulation

The Organizational Change Game by Janet Near

I was looking for other options for a simulation module in the course.  I will be teaching this course ground and then on-line.  I am especially interested if you have a simulation that has worked well in a fully on-line environment, as this is a new mode for me for this course.  

I appreciate the assistance. 

Rita 
Rita Shea-Van Fossen, PhD
Associate Professor of Management
Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship
Nova Southeastern University
3301 College Avenue, Office DeSantis 5122
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314
 
Office Email: r.shea@nova.edu

Research/Personal Email: rita_vanfossen@msn.com

Anca Metiu
Professor of Management
ESSEC Business School
France

Best,

Jonathan Kush

On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 1:01 PM, Anca Metiu <anca.metiu@gmail.com> wrote:

Rita,

Have you heard of Change Pro? It was developed by INSEAD faculty, and is available from learningways.com. I'd certainly give it a try.

Best regards,

Anca

On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 4:49 PM, Rita VanFossen <rita_vanfossen@msn.com> wrote:

I am revising a Change Management course and looking for options for a simulation to use.  I am very familiar with the following simulations: 

Harvard's Power & Influence Simulation

Experience Point's ExperienceChange simulation

The Organizational Change Game by Janet Near

I was looking for other options for a simulation module in the course.  I will be teaching this course ground and then on-line.  I am especially interested if you have a simulation that has worked well in a fully on-line environment, as this is a new mode for me for this course.  

I appreciate the assistance. 

Rita 
Rita Shea-Van Fossen, PhD
Associate Professor of Management
Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship
Nova Southeastern University
3301 College Avenue, Office DeSantis 5122
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314
 
Office Email: r.shea@nova.edu

Research/Personal Email: rita_vanfossen@msn.com

--

Anca Metiu
Professor of Management
ESSEC Business School
France

http://thepowerofwritinginorganizations.blogspot.com/

I don't know whether this is the kind of simulation you are looking for, but you might want to take a look at Deepwater, which is a fully online simulation game geared toward social responsibility and ethics (www.businessethicssimulation.com).

(Disclosure: I'm the developer of this simulation game.)

Best,

Wayne

Hi Rita,

I would recommend using EIS simulation, I have used it during change management courses and it always received a lot of appreciation from the participants. 

Best,

Abdul Karim

I am revising a Change Management course and looking for options for a simulation to use.  I am very familiar with the following simulations: 

Have the students do the fallowing:

1. (a) Identify examples from their working or student project experiences as many different types of behaviours they can think of in a defined period (five minutes?) onto post it notes. Put them up on a wall. Do this as a whole group or do this in smaller sub-groups.

(b) Then have the students develop the post its into groups. Now use this to create mind maps of their impact on 3-5 key axis:

Performance

Development

Team Work

Ethics and Sustainability

Add your own scales to reflect your syllabus

As they put them up have them put onto axis according to : Functional and Dysfunctional. 

(c) Have them reflect on the maps and their impact on behaviour in organisations perhaps against the cycles of talent management: attraction, recruitment, induction, performance, development, promotion, career development and transitions. 

(d) Finally, Ask them to consider how best to manage such behaviours and their impact on the organisation. Have each sub-group if you use this method to present to the others, and examine overlaps and differences.

You could draw many strings together here, for example you could then stick up cards from your major theories covered in your course against their clusters for example. And you can encourage the links between experience, organising thinking, and theory and practice development, cycle of observation, organization, reflection, then testing and development of policy and management practice as well as sharing and self-awareness as well as group work and wider experience sharing. So many nice points can be made here.

Ok one more scenario for you...again off the top of my head...

Have half the students put into small groups conduct a meeting or project (develop a plan a product or other simulation), provide them with a topic such as a fictitious organization. Prepare the other half to make observation of successful and unsuccessful behaviours. Keep one group as untreated.

Ask the observers now to review their observations and make a plan for developing the performance of the team they observed.

Ask them to implement the plan and then have the group repeat their performance. Debrief against performance development achieved and reflect on the purpose of focus on organizational behavior. Discuss the value of such perspectives.

Clearly this second option needs some more design work...but again, the focus is on experience, self-discovery and reflection bounded within the framework of organizational behaviour.

Wishing you all the very best

Dr John

Saudi Arabia

On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 8:14 PM, Viji Venkatraman <vijivenkatraman@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all

I am teaching the MBAs two courses: Organizational Behavior. Every year I break my head about the First Session! Usually I want to provide the students a glimpse of how the course is going to be - videos (for eg. In Pursuit of Happyness, 36 Chamber of Shaolin, Karate Kid, East or West etc), Graffiti exercise ( Schermerhorn's), Caselet discussions bringing out the course contents, BINGO .... 

I want to do something different this time - would be grateful for any suggestions. I'll collate the responses and send it to the group. 

Thanks a lot. 

Warm regards

Viji

V.Vijayalakshmi, PhD

Assistant Professor (OB)

Department of Management Studies

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Chennai, INDIA