Karlshochschule International University

Change and Innovation – An amazing teaching experiment

Autor: Prof. Dr. Lutz Becker am 11.11.2010

I have been dealing with innovation for half of my live, working with businesses and other organizations, supporting them and their leaders in getting more innovative and being more “adaptive to change” (Charles Darwin). But how to teach students dealing with change and innovation in their future career? Actually, I would neither feel comfortable with those “old fashioned” lectures and seminars nor with all these Apple, Sony or McDonalds case studies from the text books (which are used in other classes for good reasons). Teaching change and innovation should be different, shouldn’t it?

That’s why I started an experiment with my students. These students have already acquired academic skills and learned all the important rules and tools to be applied in management – they acquired the manager’s toolbox so to say, including budgeting, SWOT, 5 Forces, Balanced Scorecards and so on. Now, shortly before the exam (Change and Innovation is a class in the 5th semester), it’s time for the students to challenge these rules. The students shall not only be prepared to deal with a world full of change, complexity, dynamics, ambiguity, and uncertainty, but they shall also be able to change at least some rules of the game. And this is the guiding question: “Couldn’t it be different?”

In this respect the course (we call it a “module”) follows the constructivistic orientation of Karlshochschule and approaches the topic Change and Innovation from an evolutionary perspective. Most evolutionary processes in society, economy or businesses, good or bad, are forced by socio-technical innovation. The course deals with the question what innovation is, how it is generated and how it affects our social and economic systems. And when it comes to innovation or environmental changes, organizations the structures, processes and the kinds collaboration will be affected. It is the task of the manager, to enable organization to deal with those changes and innovations. It’s about the question how to create an innovative and adaptive enterprise.

The “product” of the entire module is what we call a “learner’s portfolio”. A document containing a learnings strategy, and based on that strategy a kaleidoscope of perspectives, insights, learnings and reflections. Among others there are two key elements to be corporated in the learner’s portfolio.

Based on a pre-specified research question and a literature research the students shall develop their own case study based on a current case in real life. They shall identify on their own how organizations or individuals in organizations deal with specified aspects of innovation respectively organizational change.

The second core element element is what we call Learning by Teaching (in German: LdL – Lernen durch Lehren). The students shall teach the knowledge they acquired to their peers.

During the time slot assigned to them, they are fully responsible for instructing your peers and generating a clear learning outcome. “The fundamental principle is to hand over as much teaching responsibility to the learner as possible and to encourage as many students as possible to engage in the highest possible degree of activity. The team of students placed in charge of the lesson must think of appropriate teaching methods to convey their topic.” (Grzega, J. (2005); Learning By Teaching – The Didactic Model LdL in University Classes [online: http://www.ldl.de/material/berichte/uni/ldl-engl.pdf; 11.06.2010]: 1) The students shall be aware that it is not (only) about the quality of their presentation, but about the learning outcomes of their peers. Therefore they shall use all kinds of didactical tools such as various forms of presentation, all kinds of guided discussions, posters, groupwork, whatever. It’s simply up to the students, to generate a learning outcome and to collect feedback about their peer’s learning outcomes.

For me as the instructor, this is an experiment – for students this is a really challenging set of tasks. In the beginning of the term I was really curious and even a little nervous about the outcomes. Now, after almost two months, I am absolutely impressed about what the students have delivered up to now. Many LdL sessions were highly creative. For example I wouldn’t even have considered the idea of fixing task sheets under the tables like one student did (change of perspective). Others hat great ideas how to teach a complex theoretical question (such as Paul Kuhn’s and Paul Feyerabend’s discourse on paradigm shifts) in a very simple and very vivid way. Others involve their peers in group experiments, such as coordination games. And even some of the weaker students showed an outstanding performance.

For me this feels like the wisdom of the crowds. In engaging the students in creating learning material (case studies), in performing as a teacher and in making them responsible for the learning outcomes, far more ideas are generated than a single instructor could deliver. The inputs are closer to the representation system and the experience of life of the students than provided by a senior instructor. The role of the instructor is less providing the input, than challenging and adjusting the outcomes.