Beyond Charisma: Improving Teaching In Executive MBA Programs [1]
Dr. Harvey J. Brightman
Regents Professor Emeritus of Management and Decision Sciences
Georgia State University
What makes for an effective EMBA teacher? Is it merely command presence, charisma, and the ability to teach and relate to manager and executives? All these are important. But the teaching and learning literature tells us there are perhaps five other critical factors. These include organization and presentation clarity, stimulation of interest and relevance of subject, and effective in-class discussion.
Let's examine each factor briefly:
Organization clarity means that students always know where they have been, are, and are going within a course. Our EMBA students while mature and ready to learn have been away from academe for over a decade. Often they find it difficult to see the course's overall "big picture." That is, how the subject material fits together into a coherent whole. When students fail to interconnect the material they will quickly forget it. We need to help them learn how to draw integrating pictures or intellectual frameworks of what they are learning.
Organization clarity requires developing learning objectives. How can we design effective presentations or case discussions if we don't know what we want our students to master? Consider using the Bloom et. al. taxonomy of learning objectives [2]. Learning objectives may not be "sexy" but they are critical to organizational clarity.
What is presentation clarity? It's the ability to explain complex subjects simply. In studying master teachers I have learned several key factors - "The Big Five". And while they seem deceptively simple, faculty members who have built their presentations around these factors have significantly improved the presentation clarity [3].
The American educator and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead stated that without interest in a subject there would be no progress. We must not assume that students are intellectually motivated to learn each and every topic or subject within our courses. How then can we motivate students? Consider using hooks.
Begin each and every presentation with a hook - an exercise, demonstration, "mini-quiz", or small case.
The goal is for our students to discover the subject's relevance. A hook should also accomplish one of following secondary goals:
- Shows students that they already have some subject knowledge. This is especially powerful for material that EMBA students might otherwise believe is "foreign".
- Demonstrates poor practice or counter-intuitive results. This is especially powerful when EMBA students think they are better managers or decision makers than they truly are.
- Shows power of the new material. This is useful when you want to demonstrate powerful software.
How can we achieve effective in-class discussions especially when many of our students are introverted on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? Moreover, how do we avoid the two most common group-discussion pathologies -- psychological anchoring and inequality of participation? There are several effective methods from the management and creativity literature. Consider using the TAPPS (thinking aloud paired problem solving method), the Van de Ven and Delbecq nominal group technique, or brainwriting. All are effective in providing quiet time for the introverts and talk time for the extroverts.
All of us know faculty members who can step into the EMBA classroom and be successful. They simply have a natural ability. But if you aren't one of them, consider mastering the five critical factors presented above. Once you do that, you will develop confidence in your teaching and ultimately achieve the necessary command presence or charisma that is the hallmark of the successful EMBA teacher.
[1] This article is a brief summary of Brightman's October 13, 2002 faculty development workshop at the Executive MBA Meeting in Keystone, Colorado.[2] Bloom, B and others. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook I, The Cognitive Domain, Longmans Green, 1956.
[3] If you are interested in obtaining examples of the "Big Five" please email Dr. Brightman at hbrightman@mindspring.com.
