Making the course more practical
January 5, 2012 
1 Comment
Having a practical element to studies is a good thing. This may take many forms: field trips, internships, etc. Ideally, hands-on elements of the course should be driven by students themselves.
Why bother with practical work?
a) Perception: The MBA is sometimes dismissed as being overly theoretical, and detached from the realities of getting things done in the real world. Hence the caricatures of new graduates, armed with 2×2 matrices, sauntering into companies demanding to lead strategies.
Making the course a little more practical won’t stop people from taking pot-shots at the qualification. But it would help ease the concerns of those genuinely interested how the course is structured.
b) Interest: Sitting back and listening to a lecture is fine. But practical exercises are a way of breaking up the status-quo, and keeping things interesting. To be honest, practical work isn’t always appreciated; it’s easier to let a lecturer do the work. But in the interests of actually keeping people engaged, these exercises do their job.
The challenges of introducing practical tasks are twofold:
Realism: Complex problems are often reduced to tractable computer simulations, or other simple group exercises. Sure, you can learn from them. But as there’s no real link to the real world, you’re not obliged to take them as seriously as you should take them. On a simulation, you can race through in the interests of just ‘getting it done’. In a group exercise, you can spend time talking about the weather, or plans for the weekend.
Variability: Once external parties are involved, it’s hard to control the quality of the experience. Examples of this at LBS include the ‘Organisational audit’ which is part of the Managing Organisational Behaviour module and the 2nd Year project. Some love these projects while others hate them; largely because some of the clients are engaged and pleasant to deal with, while others are more difficult. Faculty have little control over this. And it’s tricky for students to argue with unreasonable or uncooperative external parties for fear of hurting the school’s reputation. I think this is a large part of the reason why the 2013 intake no longer needs to do a 2nd year project, and why many of the current class would rather ditch it in favour of a normal module.
But the point remains that practical exercises when run well, are useful. To mitigate the problems of realism and variability, practical elements should be driven by students themselves. Lectures were often a low priority for me because of stuff going on outside of school. But those who got the most out of the lectures were those who had a clear project to which they could apply lessons; a family business, their own business, on-going employment, etc. With a project in the background, you’re thinking about why things are relevant; how things can be applied. These people may also spend time talking to lecturers about their projects outside classes. That’s how to get real value for money. After all, the lecture notes rarely contain anything that isn’t readily available in textbooks.
If everyone has their own pet-project, doesn’t that eliminate the need for faculty to throw in their own exercises? Yes, assuming everyone actually has something they’re working on outside of classes. In practice that probably won’t be the case. Nonetheless, I think schools would do well to stress the value of adopting an independently chosen project right at the start of the course. Something that’s done for its own sake. No assessments, no exams. This is something I’d focus more on were I to start from the beginning all over again.
