‘Crossing the divide’

Involving practitioners and the local community in student activity and research in the Business School

Berry O’Donovan
Principal Lecturer in Learning and Teaching, Business School

The Business School covers a compendium of disciplines that, although diverse in many aspects, share a common theme in that they embrace the knowledge, skills and perspectives of both academic and practitioner communities. So it should come as no surprise that the school seeks to support initiatives that cross the boundaries of these communities and encourage student participation in both worlds. However, student involvement in practitioner communities in a context of large numbers taking modules (some modules can top 600 students in the Business School) is clearly problematic and our student numbers can limit the scope of our activities. Not that we haven’t tried - I am sure Oxford’s pharmacies remember with affection the years when Tim Cracknell arranged for 500+ first year business and management students to visit local stores to research their product display and pricing structures!

Despite our large numbers we continue to use a variety of ways to pull this valuable ‘authenticity’ into our programmes and forge closer links through research and learning activities between students, staff and local practitioners. What follows are a few examples indicative of the range of initiatives used within the school.

In many modules within the Business School, but particularly within hospitality, retail and enterprise programmes, students undertake research within local organisations that underpins their assessed work. The research and outcomes can take many forms – a customer audit trail, a marketing plan for the organisation, an evaluation of the retail operations of a local store or a bespoke consultancy project. For instance in ‘Developing the Hospitality Business’, a stage 2 module, students undertake an external and internal audit to assess the operations of a local business and produce a one-year business development plan for that hospitality organisation.

In their third year over 60% of business and management students choose to do a one year industrial placement, undertaking a project that involves research into areas relevant to their host organisation. Examples of recent work include the development of a business strategy for a local airport and an environmental impact audit for a local garden centre.

The academic/practitioner nexus is even more closely tied when local practitioners take part in the assessment process, evaluating student outcomes against agreed criteria that relate to both practitioner and academic perspectives, such as has been the case for many years on entrepreneurship and retail modules such as ‘Entrepreneurship and Business Planning’ and ‘Retail Management’. Ensuring our programmes include ‘real world’ tasks that assess learning outcomes meaningful to both practitioners and academics is fundamental to our discipline and this principle underpins one major outcome of ASKe (Assessment Standards Knowledge Exchange) - a Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching located in the Business School. Over the next five years ASKe will seek to cultivate a sustainable community of learning practice that involves a wide membership of stakeholders including members of the local practitioner community in our learning and assessment practice. Arguably, it is only through such involvement that we will be able to allay fears of ‘dumbing down’ and produce graduates with knowledge and skills found relevant by employers.

The Assessment Standards Knowledge Exchange CETL.
L-R: Chris Rust, Margaret Price, Berry O'Donovan and Jude Carroll.

The school’s highest profile link to the local community is possibly the Brookes Restaurant. First year hospitality students work in the restaurant gaining valuable skills and experience, third year students plan, execute and evaluate themed events. The restaurant recently won a Reader’s Award in the Observer Food Monthly magazine. The only teaching resource to win an award, the restaurant came third in the 'best for cheap eats' section – clearly the local community continues to relish this opportunity to participate in our students’ learning!

Although fundamental to our disciplinary communities, providing our students with learning and research opportunities that involve practitioners and the local community requires the dedication and enthusiasm of teaching staff. In the context of large classes, logistical demands can easily dissuade even the most enthusiastic lecturer from following this path, so we look forward to working with the Reinvention Centre to share information and gain further guidance on providing authentic learning opportunities that involve our undergraduates with both research and practice with practitioners and the local community.