Practicing What We Teach, Teaching What Theyll Practice: Developing Reflective Practitioners Through A Capstone Business Course

Abstract

Business education is failing to prepare undergraduates for success in the 21st century workplace. In this paper we contribute one example of a course specifically designed to confront and close this gap between what we know and what we do as business educators. Our example is an innovative, student-centered, senior-level capstone course developed at the Girard School of Business and International Commerce at Merrimack College. To develop the course, Strategic Analysis and Decision Making, faculty drew from the time-tested pedagogical traditions of Oxford Universitys tutorial system as well as from the recent movement toward a pedagogy of peer-assisted learning. They conceived and implemented the course as a structure within which studentsas individuals and as team membersformulate appropriate questions for themselves in order to rise to the challenges they face during each weekly seminar with their faculty.