Search results

In our series on Business Studies in Sixth Forms there is frequent mention of the use of participative methods of learning and, in particular, of business simulations. There is a tendency to think that business simulations require the use of a computer but simple simulations can often be more effective. To show those readers not familiar with the simple business simulation what is involved and how effective this method of learning can be, we invited Chris Elgood, an independent consultant and foremost exponent in Britain of the simple simulation, to describe one of his.

The training world is getting quite regulated. It has its law‐givers and disciplinarians and pupils. Some would say it has bureaucracy. I want to defy a few rules by describing something that started by accident, is as yet incomplete and cannot be proved to have met the conventional objective. This is the Do‐it‐yourself Statistics School. It involves participation by certain students in the preparation and conduct of a course. By including them in the partnership it drastically alters the emotional climate in which the event takes place. (People who feel themselves to be non‐numerate don't have to switch off here: I am dealing with method and process, touching only lightly on content.)

There is a lot of talk about participation and the discovery method of learning, but I have not found many people who actually put it into practice. I got on to my present line just by sitting through lectures and being bored: lectures which I had arranged myself and to which I was pretty sensitive. I used to hear the decibel count of coughs and shuffles mounting as the lecture went on, and I saw the glazed eyes and absent expressions multiplying. Yet I knew that much of what was being said was valuable. I got to thinking that there just had to be a better way of putting over the information. Then I noticed that the best parts of the lecture coincided with the illustrations, when the speaker used some practical example to explain his meaning in terms that everybody could understand. It came to me that perhaps I could take similar illustrations and build them up with realistic data so that course members could work their own way through them and discover their lessons for themselves. I did it, and it worked, and the exercises I build I now call models.

I want in this article to show that a training officer can build a variety of different models and can achieve different purposes by their use. I want to diversify, as the marketing men might say. Driftwood Tools was a comparatively rigid structure which lay squarely in the field of industrial engineering and directed the student's attention to a single ‘right’ answer. Much of its value depends on that answer being reached: without it there is insufficient motivation to get valuable discussion of the related issues. A model does not necessarily have to be concerned with industrial engineering nor does it need a ‘right’ answer. I want to demonstrate these points with two more examples. Before doing so I want to make a distinction between a MODEL and a CASE STUDY. The two media have a lot in common but I believe that the differences are quite important and ought to be appreciated if you are going to get maximum value from your training sessions. The chief characteristic of a model is that it is intended to encourage experiment and to facilitate the comparison of alternative solutions. This means that whatever data is used to compile it has to be fairly specific and must be interrelated in a definite way. It must be possible to deduce with some accuracy how the alteration of one piece of data would affect the whole.

There must be few training specialists who do not employ the case study method. It is old‐established now and people would look at you sideways if you ignored its use. Yet there is little discussion of the arguments for it or against it, and seldom do you hear individual specialists comparing their manner of using cases and their skill in handling them.

In an article in the October issue I described the Four Letter Word Game as a ‘structured experience’, and such devices in general were spoken of as a half‐way‐house on the road to experiential learning proper. Their great benefit is that they get students accustomed to certain ideas, these are: • That every individual has a personal collection of values, attitudes and beliefs of which he is largely unaware but which exert a great influence upon his behaviour. • That these things can be consciously studied, provided that the climate of opinion is right. • That there can be major advantages following from such study. Structured experiences are one method of introducing students to what could be called ‘the submerged world of behaviour’.

In industry generally business games have become an accepted training method for management trainees and business graduates, but relatively little has so far been done to extend the technique to retail management. A new business game for retailing has been devised, called Outlet, preferably for use in multiple stores.

The thing I most want to put across in this model is the concept of quality control preventing the further processing of defective material. To some people this will seem a familiar lesson not requiring any special emphasis, but that isn't so when you are dealing with young trainees completely new to industry or else devoted in their work situations to mastering the details of some other, unrelated, function. To them the words ‘quality control’ suggest scrupulous care to stop bad work going out to the customer and a greater or lesser financial outlay to achieve this end. The underlying attitude is this: ‘good quality costs money—better quality costs more. First prevent complaints by rigorous inspection and then examine your manufacturing procedure.’ I want to show that an emphasis on the second of those points can sometimes result in better quality for less cost than expected. Like other things, quality is not related only to how much money you spend, but to where and how well you spend it. To be preoccupied with final inspection will restrict you to the wrong end of the process and may, by the priorities which it implies, allow the root cause of poor quality to be shelved or ignored. It is too easy to get customer satisfaction (highly desirable) balanced out by large stocks of worthless scrap (very much the reverse). It gets a bit like putting a grid across a river: you may get clear water below, but you get an awful lot of rubbish piling up above it.

Experiential Learning is concerned with helping the individual to learn about himself and his behaviour. This excludes activities in which the student undergoes an experience ‐ and learns from it ‐ but in which the subject is technical.

The Royal Society of Arts Examinations Board has recently published a Consultative Report The Educational and Training Implications of Modern Technological Developments as they affect Offices and Administration. The Report has already aroused a great deal of interest, and the Study Group would very much appreciate comments on the Report and, in particular, various matters which are raised in Chapter 7. Closing date is 31 October.