PBL Implementation of Computer Simulation in the Teaching of Strategic Management at Duy Tan University (P.2)
Strategic Management purports to teach students how to achieve the SMART (Specific-Measurable-Attainable-Relevant-Time-based) objectives. An overview of the improved process that we used for the computer simulation of Strategic Management will provide a better idea of how we set out to attain our objectives. Based on the efforts listed in the previous section, the instructors were required to provide lectures about the essentials of Strategic Management. After that, a preliminary multiple-choice test was delivered to our students to assess their skills and knowledge in Accounting, Finance, Marketing and Human Resource. The instructors would then grade the students’ tests and assign team members based on the ranges of their test scores. One ideal team would consist of 4-6 students from different majors. Next, the team leader received the game simulation manual from the instructor and the team was provided with enough time to discuss and ask questions related to the simulated challenges. Instructors and supporting staff would always be available to answer their questions about the course contents and the simulated game. The students should also be informed that their grade would be marked based on their simulation performance as well as the write-up interpretations of the simulated business scenarios which they ran into. For the simulation performance, if there was a tie result amongst two or more than two teams, the higher grades would be assigned to the faster ones. At the end of the course, members of different team are invited to present in class their chosen strategies under certain business scenarios as well as their choice of accounting/financial conventions for the final write-up. Final deliverables include a final write-up and a board presentation accompanied by a 10K report (if some international accounting convention was used) or a series of quarter-end financial reports (if the Vietnamese accounting convention was adopted).
In order to assess and validate the effects of our PBL-based modification efforts for the implementation of the computer simulation for Strategic Management, a post-course survey was designed for students who took Strategic Management with the new simulation settings. The survey adopts a five-point Likert scale, with the scale being in put in a reversed order with 5 coming first as Strongly Agree and 1 coming last as Strongly Disagree. The reason for the use of a reverse Likert scale is because with the use of the standard Likert scale and given the many statements in the survey, students tend to scan fast through the statements and most of the times, providing quick answers as either Agree or not, which mostly would be Neutral rather than Disagree. By reversing the scale, students would be caught by surprise and they would have to think twice before providing their answers. In addition, if they agreed or disagreed with a certain statement, they would truly show the strength of their agreement or disagreement.
The focus of the survey results would be on:
(1) MEAN VALUES, and
(2) STANDARD DEVIATIONS
of answers for each question.
The mean values would provide a relative answer as to whether a certain PBL effort has been effective or not and/or whether our PBL effort does synchronize with the corresponding PBL standards as indicated before. On the other hand, the standard deviations would offer a clear view of how much spread out the students’ feedbacks are on some specific aspect. This is indeed very important because the course of Strategic Management is being taught to a wide variety of business and hospitality students in various majors like Business Administration, Accountancy, Finance, Banking, Marketing, Hotel Management, Tour Management, and Restaurant Management. This is not to mention of the fact that the quality and capability of this big group of students are quite varied.
Duy Tan University PSU-MGT 403 - Strategic Management |
Academic Year and Semester:
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Team’s Name: |
Student’s Name: |
Student’s Major: |
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5: Strongly Agree - 4: Agree - 3: Neutral - 2: Disagree - 1: Strongly Disagree Tick one |
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5 |
4 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
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1. The preliminary test did emphasize the Accounting materials necessary for the computer simulation in the course. |
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2. The preliminary test did emphasize the Finance materials necessary for the computer simulation in the course. |
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3. The preliminary test did emphasize the Marketing materials necessary for the computer simulation in the course. |
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4. The preliminary test did emphasize the Human Resource materials necessary for the computer simulation in the course. |
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5. The preliminary test did emphasize the Information Systems materials necessary for the computer simulation in the course. |
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6. The preliminary test did create a need to review on materials learned before. |
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7. The team assignment by the instructor was satisfying, bringing together people with supplemental skills and knowledge. |
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8. The grade distribution for performance in the computer simulation was adequate. |
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9. The grade distribution for the regular and final reports was adequate. |
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10. The grade distribution for the final executive presentation was adequate. |
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11. The overall grade distribution did encourage the team to spend more time to learn about the simulation and to interpret results after each simulation session. |
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12. In every simulation decision and report write-up, our team worked closely together. |
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13. The computer simulation required significant proficiency in English. |
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14. The online vocabulary and online support staff for computer simulation were adequate. |
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15. Our team did try to learn international conventions in accounting and finance. |
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16. Our team adopted international conventions in accounting and finance for the report write-up. |
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A sample of 120 students, who took Strategic Management with the new simulation settings were surveyed. Out of those 120 students, 35 students are Business Administration and Marketing majors, 23 are Accounting majors, 26 students are Finance and Banking majors, 27 students are Hotel Management majors and 9 students are Tour Management majors. The survey was carried out at the end of the fall semester 2014, and it required a total of around 120 working hours of 3 instructors and 7 teaching assistants.
Table 1: Numeric Results from the Survey
5 |
4 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
N |
MEAN |
STANDARD DEVIATION |
|
Question 1. |
23 |
15 |
24 |
45 |
13 |
120 |
2.92 |
1.31 |
Question 2. |
34 |
27 |
39 |
12 |
8 |
120 |
3.56 |
1.19 |
Question 3. |
36 |
43 |
19 |
12 |
10 |
120 |
3.69 |
1.24 |
Question 4. |
12 |
16 |
32 |
34 |
26 |
120 |
2.62 |
1.24 |
Question 5. |
24 |
37 |
31 |
21 |
7 |
120 |
3.42 |
1.16 |
Question 6. |
37 |
32 |
20 |
23 |
8 |
120 |
3.56 |
1.29 |
Question 7. |
24 |
23 |
33 |
21 |
19 |
120 |
3.10 |
1.34 |
Question 8. |
33 |
27 |
16 |
14 |
30 |
120 |
3.16 |
1.56 |
Question 9. |
46 |
32 |
20 |
15 |
7 |
120 |
3.79 |
1.24 |
Question 10. |
37 |
23 |
21 |
21 |
18 |
120 |
3.33 |
1.45 |
Question 11. |
23 |
45 |
23 |
17 |
12 |
120 |
3.42 |
1.23 |
Question 12. |
26 |
36 |
17 |
14 |
27 |
120 |
3.17 |
1.47 |
Question 13. |
13 |
35 |
26 |
15 |
31 |
120 |
2.87 |
1.37 |
Question 14. |
15 |
21 |
24 |
28 |
32 |
120 |
2.66 |
1.37 |
Question 15. |
68 |
29 |
11 |
8 |
4 |
120 |
4.24 |
1.08 |
Question 16. |
21 |
24 |
28 |
26 |
21 |
120 |
2.98 |
1.35 |
The survey results revealed certain interesting findings about our PBL efforts in redesigning the computer simulation settings for Strategic Management:
• First of all, it appeared that the preliminary test of business skills and knowledge has served as a strong reminder for students to review on materials of previous business courses with around 57.5% of the students Agreed or Strongly Agreed that they had done certain review. Answers to Question 1 to 5 indicated that the preliminary test had properly touched upon materials in Finance, Information Systems and especially, Marketing as required for the computer simulation. Test items for Accounting and Human Resource, on the other hand, were not very relevant as 58 out 120 students Disagreed or Strongly Disagreed about the relevance of questions for Accounting, and another 60 out of 120 has the same viewpoint for questions about Human Resource. This probably has to do with the fact that our questions for Accounting mostly focused on the Vietnamese accounting convention taught before while the computer simulation for Strategic Management indeed did not have much to do with Human Resource aspects.
• The effectiveness of our team member assignment based on the results of the preliminary test was not recognized because up to 60.83% of the students were either Neutral or Disagreed or Strongly Disagreed about whether our team assignment actually brought about integrative and supplemental skills and knowledge for the team. The general neutrality in Question 7 signified that either there was not much gap in the capability of our sampled students or there was problem in our team assignment criteria based on preliminary grading.
• With respect to our move to emphasize on the explanation and interpretation of business decisions in the simulation rather than the simulation performance per se, there was generally a consensus on the new grading percentiles for the regular and final reports, the final executive presentation, and the team performance in the simulation with the overall Agreement and Strong Agreement rates of 65%, 50% and 50%, respectively. One thing which should be pointed out is that answers to Question 8 about the grading structure for team performance in the simulation have a very high standard deviation of up to 1.56, with 33 students (out of 120) Strong Agreed with the new grade distribution for simulation performance while at the same time there were also 30 students who showed Strong Disagreement.
• 56.67% of the students Agreed or Strongly Agreed that the overall grade distribution encouraged them to learn more about the simulation while 51.67% confirmed that they had to work closely together for every simulation decision and write-up. This indicated our success in bringing the students together for collaboration and search for new knowledge according to the PBL standards, even only to a certain extent.
• An average Likert point of 2.87 (out of 5) for Question 13 signified a less-than-neutral response to the importance of English proficiency in using the simulation. However, we should keep in mind that up to 35 (out of 120) students still Agreed that English proficiency is required for the simulation. That means while most students were comfortable with our English-based simulation, there were still many who were not. And to our disappointment, the online vocabulary features and online support staff were not as effective as expected with up to 70% of the students expressing their Neutrality, Disagreement or Strong Disagreement about the value of such support.
• The contrast between the answers to Question 15 and 16 raised certain concern in our PBL effort. While up to 80.83% of the students stated that they did attempt to learn international accounting and financial conventions for the simulation, only 37.5% actually adopted those new conventions for their simulation reports. So, giving students a high level of freedom is not necessary a good thing. The fact that most students still choose to stick to Vietnamese accounting and financial convention also signified the failure of our bonus points as an encouragement for students to learn and try new conventions.
It should be said that the nature of our computer simulation for Strategic Management mostly deals with financial budgeting for different Marketing tactics and quality control activities. As a result, it does not deal that much with in-depth Finance and Human Resource issues. The simulation actually has much to do with different book-keeping accounting activities; thus, the low perceived relevance by our students for Accounting test items in our preliminary tests indicated our failure in tackling the right aspects of Accounting for the simulation. Sampled case studies on the making of the 10K reports (for the international accounting convention) and the quarter-end financial reports (for the Vietnamese accounting convention) should be provided to our students to better prepare them for later processing of the simulation results. On the other hand, for the Human Resource aspect of our simulation, an issue was raised by students as to whether team members holding a specific role might assume the decision-making responsibility for that role. Right now, even though one member may be designated as the CEO, another as the CFO, another as the COO, etc., most of the budgeting or quality control activities are done jointly by the whole team or by any one (or two) team members alone, thus losing the whole meaning of labour allocation in Human Resource. There is no easy answer to this, and future studies should look more into ways for better Human Resource settings in our simulation. While the preliminary test has helped greatly our students’ review and integration of past knowledge for the simulation, it did not help much with the optimal assignment of students to teams as expected. Still, it is important that instructors take charge of the team member assignment; otherwise, good students may try to team up together, leaving average and below-average students to one another.
Perhaps, the biggest success amongst our PBL-based approaches was with the development of the new grade distribution which did not put so much emphasis on the performance in the simulation alone. Rather, the relevance of interpretations about certain business scenarios that students get themselves into as well as the quality of the final reports, the 10K or quarter-end reports, and the board presentations also add up to a sizable grade percentile, which did give most students more motivation in their learning of the simulation as well as Strategic Management. The fact that students also have to stick together on every aspect of the simulation and related deliverables also signified our success in helping them learn from each other and develop more or less of an integrative business mindset individually. While teams who do well on the simulation alone may not be so happy with this approach, it is suggested that some additional bonus points to the teams will settle the issue, and at the same time, keeping everyone happy in our learning process. The bonus-point approach can also be adopted to encourage students to improve on their English for the simulation as well as for the whole course. Specifically, bonus points should be given out to teams who can write their reports in English or do their board presentations in English. Of course, bonus points may not always work as it was the case with our incentives for students to choose international accounting conventions instead of the Vietnamese one.
The mixed results of our PBL-based approaches indicated that there are still certain shortcomings in our PBL efforts for the redesign of simulation settings in the course of Strategic Management. Still, more or less, some efforts like preliminary test of business skills and knowledge or the redesign of the grade distribution have appeared to encourage students to learn new things and seriously engage them in critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, and public presentation. Further studies should look into more effective ways to help improve students’ English proficiency, redesign team assignment criteria and set up effective incentives for the adoption of new knowledge and approaches to serve the ultimate goal of better implementation of our computer simulations. Inquiries into differences between students of different majors may also be needed to accommodate for better learning of Strategic Management materials from various business perspectives. In addition, since our current simulation game is some Western-designed software (Abdullah, et al., 2013), it is not specifically suitable Asian or Vietnamese students. This may be considered as a challenge as well as an appealing opportunity for Vietnamese software companies. Vietnamese computer simulations for Vietnamese students will definitely be an attainable dream. One last thing to point out is that Strategic Management and its computer simulations are always very much human-related, which requires continuous improvement of interpersonal skills on the part of both our students and instructors. Thus, this strongly reminds our instructors and students about the importance of communication in the simulation implementation rather than technology aspects of the simulated games.
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