Submission to MBA Roundtable Innovator Award Program

Transcription

1 Submission to MBA Roundtable Innovator Award Program August 15, 2011

2 The Challenge Your students don t think critically analytically and they don t communicate well in their job interviews. With a growing crescendo over the past decade, many recruiters from across the United States and elsewhere repeated this concern about MBA students. Whether because of a change in primary and secondary education systems or a fundamental shift in the economic landscape and demand for human capital, much consensus exists on the need for improved critical thinking ability 1, especially from MBA graduates. A conversation with the president of a leading health care organization summed up the issue well. When asked to describe the one thing needed today by job applicants compared to a decade ago, she offered just one response: applicants today must excel in critical thinking. It is precisely these critical thinking skills that recruiters find lacking in many MBA students. The Response The Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, a mid-sized private research university in Missouri, with BSBA, MBA, PMBA, EMBA, specialty masters, and Ph.D. programs, sought to create and invent new ways for responding to this pressing employer need. Focusing on its daytime MBA program, the school launched an initiative called Critical Thinking@Olin. The initiative involved developing a novel approach to teaching critical thinking, redesigning MBA orientation along with curriculum changes including introducing two new courses and substantial reconfiguration of a third course, developing a monograph and various teaching tools including the application of peer and self-assessments, the initial and continuing training of faculty and staff on critical thinking tools and techniques, creating testimonial videos of executives and students alike, publishing collateral materials supporting the initiative, and incorporating expectations of critical thinking into all courses throughout the curriculum. The Results Launched in the fall of 2007, the Critical Thinking@Olin initiative contributes to a fundamental and functional transformation in student abilities and Olin s MBA program. On the surface, many students now acknowledge choosing Olin because of the program s impact on their critical thinking. Indeed, through MBA alumni and marketing and advertising efforts, Olin is developing a reputation for advancing and elevating critical thinking skills that stimulate applications and admissions. More directly and importantly, Critical Thinking@Olin impacts student employment success. Recruiter feedback increasingly offers a stream of testimonials about Olin s students improved ability to face today s business challenges. For instance, a recruiter recently offered what is becoming a typical comment I found your students to be well prepared with good judgment [and] ability to structure thoughts and discussion. Olin prepares candidates with strong analytical, communication and leadership abilities. Quantitative employment data is consistent with the qualitative recruiter comments. Olin s employment rates for MBA students surged since the introduction of the initiative. 1 Preparing the Workers of Today for the Jobs of Tomorrow, Executive Office of the President, Council of Economic Advisors, July

3 In the past couple of years, Business Week acknowledged Olin as among the top business schools for employment of MBAs 90 days after graduation (first place one year, second in another year). And, the pace of employment for 2011 graduates is substantially ahead of last year suggesting even better results. Beyond employment rates, the average caliber of jobs taken is notably improving. While many initiatives have positively contributed to these results, Critical is recognized as playing a pivotal role. Another indicator of the initiative s impact is from experts in MBA education. The initiative was featured in the 2011 AACSB symposium entitled Redesigning the MBA: A Curriculum Development Symposium and discussed in Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads by Datar, Garvin, and Cullen. This external recognition has drawn the interest of other business schools seeking to adopt Olin s approach to critical thinking for their own MBA programs. The Initiative The foundation of the Critical Thinking@Olin initiative is its content. While standard approaches to critical thinking conceptualize it in terms of logic and overcoming logical fallacies, Olin s approach offers a different conceptualization overcoming biases and impediments especially with respect to problem formulation. Indeed, a primary objective of the initiative is to help students formulate problems comprehensively without jumping to a solution a common source of many biases and thinking impediments. To do so, the initiative inculcates in students a set of processes for inquiry, eight elements of thought to enhance completeness of thinking, a set of intellectual standards with which to evaluate thinking, and a disposition of student responsibility, assessment, and reflection. Process. While Critical Thinking@Olin introduces a variety of thinking processes to students, the primary process called Individual Inquiry (I 2 ) is depicted in the diagram below. Through case studies, written assignments, and classroom conversations, students develop the capability to launch an inquiry and engage in divergent thinking to expand the range of alternative problem formulations. While doing so they are cautioned and trained to forestall committing to and even mentioning a solution. With an expansive set of alternative formulations, students then engage in choosing which formulation or set of formulations is relevant to solve, making appropriate assumptions to support the narrowing of the problem s formulation. With the formulation chosen, they again engage in divergent thinking by identifying and exploring alternative solution methods. With methods identified, they evaluate methods and investigate alternative solutions, ultimately converging to a decision. 2

4 Another important part of Critical is to engage in reflection after making a decision. Reflection reviews the process by which a decision was made, seeks out potential biases and responds to them, and causes students to identify and understand long-run consequences with the goal of mitigating downside risk while capturing upside benefits. Elements. Critical Thinking@Olin introduces eight elements of thinking using an acronym pickaxe (spelled PPPICACC), which are used to enhance the I 2 process. Using the first letter of each element to form an acronym, PPPICACC stands for Points of view, Purposes, Problem, Information, Concepts, Assumptions, Conclusions, and Consequences. Students enhance their I 2 process by exploring how each one of these elements contribute to generating more comprehensive problem formulations as well as arriving at valuable solutions to challenging problems. Each element represents a set of questions and probes that students then can utilize to help them comprehensively formulate problems without jumping to solutions. Standards. While processes that rely on the eight elements can enhance critical thinking ability, they are not sufficient to do so without standards against which thinking can be assessed and the disposition not only to take responsibility for their thinking but also to engage in assessments and reflections that advance the capabilities. To help make the standards more readily applicable they are presented in four categories: Clarity and precision; Accuracy and logic; Relevance, depth, breadth, and significance; and Evenhandedness and ethical. Combining the first letter of each category forms the acronym CARE. Whereas students are encouraged to apply pickaxe to difficult problems they are advised to attend to the intellectual standards if they care about their thinking. As described below, the intellectual standards are used in processes of assessment so that students can accelerate advancing their critical thinking ability. Disposition. Advancing critical thinking depends fundamentally on the students disposition to take full responsibility for learning through reflection and assessment. The initiative asserts that critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-motivated, and self-corrected thinking. Reflection involves three steps: developing an accurate account of what happened; taking full responsibility for thinking, words, and actions; and identifying what could have been done better and how they could have figured it out beforehand. A variety of techniques are offered to help students advance their reflection skills. Assessment offers a range of methods for evaluation; yet, Critical Thinking@Olin places special emphasis on exploiting peer and self-assessments as a primary means to engage students in reflecting and to accelerate improving upon their thinking abilities. The Implementation Within minutes of the start of orientation, students begin their course on Critical Thinking@Olin. Currently entitled Critical Thinking and Impactful Communication, the course attempts to break down existing thinking approaches rebuilding student thinking around the principles of Critical Thinking@Olin. Known as Go!Program, these first two weeks are a boot camp that attempts to fundamentally transform thinking and inspire students to adopt a disposition that will accelerate their thinking ability. While 3

5 intense during orientation, the course continues throughout the semester linking critical thinking to impactful communication and relies upon repeated application of peer and self-assessment so students learn to coach each other on advancing thinking. Providing archetypes and modal responses and reviewing both assignments and assessments anonymously in the classroom, faculty members set high standards for inquiry, critical thinking, assessing, communicating, and coaching with students ultimately learning to emulate these high standards. An elective course on critical thinking and analysis is offered in the spring semester. The course expands critical thinking from individuals to teams and introduces processes to help avoid biases in both problem formulation and problem solving activities. Additionally, the MBA curriculum committee requires syllabi for every course in the MBA curriculum to incorporate critical thinking and its objectives. Such a comprehensive approach to critical thinking across the curriculum requires development and training sessions for all staff and faculty. The training occurs annually by providing to all new incoming faculty members a half-day program on Critical Thinking@Olin and how faculty can use its principles to enhance learning outcomes. To provide a handy resource for students, a 36-page monograph in the form of a small pocket-sized booklet documents and summarizes the principles of Critical Thinking@Olin. The monograph is introduced by a real story of a student who initially thought an interview for a perfect job went well. Unfortunately, the interview did not culminate in a second round or a job offer. With the student initially blaming faculty and the program for the failed interview, the reader discovers how the student s thinking was biased and failed to fully formulate questions asked by the interviewer the student s critical thinking was fundamentally flawed. The narrative grounds and helps students navigate the monograph s content. In addition to the monograph, collateral material in the form of bookmarks, pocket summaries, and posters featuring the graphic on the cover of this submission are visually available throughout the school. Videos of C-suite executives offer additional valuable support for the Critical Thinking@Olin. In these videos, executives acknowledge how their own organizations frequently jump to solutions, which can lead to solving the wrong problem subsequently undermining efficiency and effectiveness of their leadership teams. While students react favorably to videos of executives, they respond even more positively to video testimonials provided by graduating MBA students. These testimonials describe how the tools of critical thinking enabled them to achieve extraordinary success during their summer internships often leading to full-time job offers. Olin Business School s initiative of Critical Thinking@Olin is transformative. While every change effort must account for the unique history and culture of an organization, Critical Thinking@Olin nonetheless offers content, tools, and a set of experiences that many MBA programs may find valuable for advancing students thinking capabilities and increasing employment statistics. For more information, please contact Jackson Nickerson (314) , nickerson@wustl.edu. 4