Students as problem solvers

This team of CMMU students is busy developing an Internet market strategy and website for the prominent Thai boxing promotion company OneSongchai, one of four problem-based-learning modules they take in their last two terms. Those students clearly visible in the photo are from left to right Phennapa Chantranon, Nanthanat Itdhiamornkulchai and Pintumat Surangkamaneesin

Even the vaunted MBA degree, the so-called passport to business success, has been called into question. Surveying decades of research, Stanford University researchers Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christina Fong concluded that with few exceptions, MBA programmes teach little of real use in the business world and actually have little effect on salaries in the long run.

As you might expect, these conclusions are hotly disputed by those involved in MBA programmes, but the research has caused some healthy introspection and, in some cases, significant changes in the curriculum.

Supattra Sukarom

Interestingly, relevance is not a big concern for many master-degree students in the international programme at the College of Management, Mahidol University (CMMU) located in SCB Park in Bangkok. Take Supattra Sukarom. With two promotions on her job at a local multinational company during the 19 months she has been enrolled at CMMU, she is quite confident her professors have got things right.

Currently an assistant regional quality manager for Kuehne & Nagel, Supattra has become an in-house training manager to over 120 employees, introducing them to many of the topics and techniques she has learned in her own coursework at CMMU.

CMMU opened in 1997. It now offers the Master of Management in seven specialisations ranging from traditional subject areas like general management and human resources to cutting-edge programmes in entrepreneurship and new technology ventures. It is this specialisation, incidentally, that sets the MM degree apart from the more general MBA.

Students typically complete their programmes in five 14-week terms over a period of 19 months, attending classes on weekdays, nights or weekends. All students take the same five core courses, followed by three foundation courses specific to their major. They then choose five specialisation courses offered in their programme area.

A student majoring in e-business management, for example, would take specialisation courses such as Strategies for E-Commerce and Internet Security, while an innovation in management major would take courses like Supply Chain Management and Procurement Logistics.

Dr Phillip Hallinger

Classes are small, averaging only 25 students. The approach is consciously learner-centred, with students enjoying frequent faculty contact, personal attention and feedback. This, says CMMU’s Executive Director, Dr Phillip Hallinger, is particularly true of the final two terms, known as the “capstone”.

Initially, says Dr Hallinger, CMMU required students to spend their last two terms doing the traditional master thesis or independent study. While these options are still available, they are being rapidly supplanted by a third, more innovative option called the “consulting practice”.

The weakness of the first two options, Dr Hallinger explains, is that while they are undeniably learner-centred, they also give an artificial learning experience that few students will ever duplicate in the workplace. With the consulting practice, on the other hand, students work in small teams to confront realistic business problems using an adaptation of the problem-base learning (PBL) approach pioneered by leading western medical schools.

On the surface, PBL looks similar to the case study, a staple in many post-graduate business programmes around the world, including Thailand. There is a fundamental difference, however, Dr Hallinger stresses. Unlike case studies in which problems are presented to students to give them practice in applying previously learned information, PBL uses problems as a stimulus for new learning.

A good example, says Dr Hallinger, himself one of the world’s foremost authorities on PBL, is the seven-week module on employee selection. “This term the company we’re using is Starbucks,” he relates. “The students are given the problem of hiring a shift manager for Starbucks. They have to design the whole selection process, including the interview questions and the work sample specifications. The students are actually given the resumes of three people and they have to contact those people.

“The team of students conducts the interviews and the work samples with the candidates. They then have to make a selection and write a selection memo to the instructor, recommending whom they would select and why. They also have to turn in a VCD with the video tape of the interview and the work sample.

“It’s a simulation, but it’s as close as you can get without being asked by Starbucks to make the selection,” Hallinger asserts. “Starbucks actually gives us the job descriptions and their list of competences for the job. We bring in fourth year English majors from Rajabhats – the kind of people that Starbucks would be looking for in the real labour market at this level of job. We then train those students how to do the role play.”

A second seven-week module in the consulting practice option (students take four altogether) is designed to introduce students to the challenges and opportunities of marketing products and services on the Internet. Appropriately named “retail to e-tail”, it presents students with the problem of helping a local Thai SME that has previously only marketed its goods in traditional channels, to expand its market share using the web.

“The students have to develop two products,” explains Dr Vichita Vachanophas who is teaching the module this term. “One is an electronic marketing plan. The other is a prototype website – the implementation of the marketing plan. We want them to know that to have a plan is easy, but to implement it is not.

“I act mainly as a facilitator,” Dr Vichita says of her role. “I am also the middle person between them and the company.

“We have only seven weeks. I lecture the first week and the third week. When I say lecture, I don’t mean lecturing for three hours, only about one-and-a-half. We have another instructor who comes in the second and the fourth week who talks about website design and what the students have to consider in the process – domain names, web servers and so on.”

If seven weeks seems short for the instructor, it is doubly so for the students, few of whom have had any experience whatsoever in web design. The SMEs chosen for the module can also be challenging. This term, for example, the consulting teams are struggling to come up with an effective e-tail programme for OneSongchai the renowned Thai boxing promotion company.

The five-woman team the learning post spoke to was in the midst of developing their marketing strategy and plan. They had decided to cover both the business-to-business (B to B) and business-to-consumer (B to C) aspects of the company’s business. B to B was aimed at international boxing promoters and focused on sending OneSongchai boxers for matches abroad and bringing international fighters to Thailand. B to C, on the other hand, was aimed mainly at tourists. It was meant to educate tourist about Thai boxing, and more importantly, to entice them to purchase tickets to OneSongchai promotions at Lumpini and Ratchadamnoern stadiums. Thai boxing products and CD videos would also be available for sale on the website.

The website, they had decided, needed to be exciting, with an emphasis on entertainment. To attract viewers it needed to be prominently placed on major search engines and the students were also negotiating links to partner sites like tourist agencies.

All the students agreed the workload for this and other modules was extremely heavy, but it was also interesting. They said the big advantage to this over more traditional approaches was the depth of understanding they gained of the subject matter and the processes involved in developing their products.

Computer simulations can also be an effective tool in PBL. One such simulation, designed by Dr Hallinger himself, forms the core of a module entitled “leading organisational change”.

“Organisational change is something I’ve written about, studied and participated in for 25 years,” Dr Hallinger relates. “For this simulation, we picked something that’s very up-to-date and a problem that would seem very real to many people: the implementation of a new IT program.

“The change is coming from the top down – from the managing director. They’re going to pilot it in two branches – the eastern branch and the western branch – and the head office. This is a typical change strategy of banks,” Dr Hallinger explains.

Although the students carrying out the simulation may not realise it, the program is based on two prominent theoretical models. For example, The 24 virtual people they deal with in the simulation are based on the “adopter-types model” which divides workers into categories based on how they typically respond to change. On opposite sides are the innovators and the resisters, both small percentages of the total group. Then there are the social leaders and the majority who may not have strong feelings either way.

“The students know nothing about these categories,” Dr Hallinger says. “They read the descriptions of the people and we tell them to rate each person from zero to five in terms of how much support they think each person would give this project.”

A second theoretical model – the “concerns-space-adoption model” – comes into play when the students try to design and implement their strategy for change. “This model says that to succeed in bringing about change, you have to adapt your strategy to the concerns or needs of the people,” Dr Hallinger explains.

“Thus, for example, with the person who is afraid of the new technology, you have to adapt your strategy to the concerns of that person. Furthermore, all through that simulation you have to keep adapting your strategy as the people change. The students have to ask what does the person need now and pick the proper activity to do it.”

While Dr Hallinger says the actual theoretical language is never introduced, the concepts are. “For example, as the students play the simulation and they meet these different people, we do introduce adopter types and we ask who the innovators are. What about the social leaders? Here are the characteristics of social leaders and with social leaders, here is the strategy we need to use to get them to accept the change.”

Problem-based learning is hard work for both students and their instructors, Dr Hallinger says. For the instructors, curriculum preparation is extremely time-consuming and so is the feedback they are required to give each student. Their easiest time probably comes in during the class itself.

Dr Pornkasem Kantamara

“When they play, I pretty much step back and let them learn through trial and error at first,” says Dr Pornkasem Kantamara, who is running the course this term. “When the students conduct the activities, they see the result right away – they are sometimes successful, other times not. That’s the fun of it. They have to discuss the result and ask themselves why [things happened that way].”

This is more fun for the instructor as well, Dr Hallinger adds, “because you actually get to hear what the students are thinking. In Thailand, and in other Asian countries in particular, it’s very frustrating for instructors because it’s hard to get students to answer questions. So you never know what they’re really thinking. You never really know if they understand what you’re talking about.

“When you move into the problem-based learning, you move around the classroom and you listen to them talk. Then you understand what they do understand, what they don’t understand,” he observes.

Is it effective? Dr Hallinger clearly thinks so. He cites one important measure in support. “We get lots of our students who have already graduated who ask if they can keep studying.

“Imagine that. They’ve got their degree and they ask if they can come back because there are still more subjects they want to learn. That to me is the single best proof that they’re getting something useful because they’re not going to spend more money after they get their degree if they don’t perceive value.”

For more information: telephone: 02 937-5656; email: info@cmmu.net
website: www.cmmu.net
Location: 4th Floor, SCB Park Plaza, Tower II West, Bangkok
Open House: January 25th from 1:00 to 4:00

For information on problem-based learning, contact Dr Hallinger: philip.h@cmmu.net