Course: Qualitative Research Methods. Objectives: To provide students with an experiential understanding of the six steps to conducting a thematic analysis: (1) gaining familiarity with the data, (2) creating coding categories or subcategories, (3) generating themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) labeling themes, and (6) identifying exemplars. To help…

Courses: Public speaking, business and professional communication, group communication. Objectives: This activity will introduce Monroe's Motivated Sequence as a way to organize persuasive arguments; improve students' ability to deliver presentations with consistent content, voice, and style; and improve team-based delivery skills.

Understanding bottlenecks is an in-class experiential learning exercise designed to improve students' understanding of production system capacity issues. After an introductory teaching session on capacity and constraint management, students are formed into groups of six to assume the roles of one raw material handler, four production workers, and…

Although U.S. corporations rely heavily on merit pay programs to distribute pay increases to their employees, many undergraduate students, even those who have held jobs, lack exposure to merit pay programs until they take their first human resource management course. The exercise gives students an opportunity to experience how organizations make…

Strategic alliances--voluntary interfirm arrangements involving resource sharing--are critical to firm success. To help strategic management students better understand alliance negotiation and formation, we developed a simple game that places them in a real alliance negotiation situation, involving simultaneous cooperation and competition (i.e.,…

Group and team class decision-making activities often focus on demonstrating that "two heads are better than one." Typically, students solve a problem or complete an assessment individually, then in a group. Generally, the group does better and that is what the students learn. However, if that is all such an activity conveys, then a…

This article offers readers 13 "My Favorite Assignments" that were presented at the Association for Business Communication's 83rd annual conference held in Miami, Florida, in 2018. The teaching innovations offered include assignments that present quick, fun icebreaker exercises; visual communication and diversity; rhetoric; email; and…

Bullying prevention starts with helping young children understand and accept diversity--the earlier the better. That's why your school team needs this ready-to-use resource, a simple, fun, and effective way to promote social acceptance in the critical early years of attitude development. Perfect for K-2 classrooms, this book presents the…

This article presents a classroom activity that introduces students to the concept of themed space. Students learn to think critically about the spaces they encounter on a regular basis by analyzing existing spaces and by working in groups to create their own themed space. This exercise gives students the chance to see the relevance of critical…

"This Book Is Not About Drama" explores issues around storytelling, silent speech, writing and imagination and shows teachers how to use role play and discussion to build language experiences that are meaningful for learners. This authoritative resource is full of simple strategies that begin with the simple and evolve in to more complex…

Although many students have some knowledge of patents, it can be difficult for them to understand the components of an innovator's decision-making process. Key issues, such as whether to patent or to use trade secrecy, how broad a scope to claim, and what to do in the event of patent infringement, can be difficult to grasp from a standard lecture.…

Most systems development projects incorporate some sort of life cycle approach in their development. Whether the development methodology involves a traditional life cycle, prototyping, rapid application development, or some other approach, the first step usually involves a system investigation, which includes problem identification, feasibility…

This article describes a class activity for use with students (ages 8 through 15) having moderate-to-mild disabilities. Children work through feelings of grief and loss by constructing a "class book" from pictures and articles depicting loss or grief. Students use the book as a basis for personally reflecting on and writing about the…

Discusses transitions to and from specific activities (i.e., free choice time, group activities, clean-up time, outside play, meals, naps, and using bathrooms) as well as children's arrivals and departures from the preschool or day care center. (CB)

Presents suggestions for developing a thematic teaching unit to help students overcome fear by learning about the courage of survivors in literature. The article recommends reading a story aloud, discussing courage and survival of the characters, and developing group-guided reading activities that involve individual or group projects. (SM)