I recently had the honor of working with the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University on the re-design and delivery of the capstone course for their Business Minor students, which is the culminating and integrative experience of this educational program. I write this post as a summary and personal reflection on the experience across both phases of design and delivery for this course, to which I was brought in to lend emphasis from an industry perspective.
Titled “Developing Organizational Opportunities”, this course covers the wide berth of topics around identifying, examining, and addressing the internal and external environment that an organization operates in. Concepts include critical thinking, strategy, internal analysis, external analysis, financials, strategy & implementation, operations & supply chain, market entry, and change management - all of which will be familiar to those practitioners of each discipline and those leading organizations. Yep (and yikes), that’s a whole lot to aspire to cover in one semester and where different teaching mechanisms would better suit each topic.
We structured this as an experiential course that mixed lecture and activities, individual assignments and group work, and with significant emphasis on individual responsibility and accountability for attendance, participation, and impact. One instructional design elements that proved to be very useful was the idea of ‘loaded grading’ which we applied to key groupwork. The way it works is that a portion of a student’s grade for such an assignment would be based on team performance (i.e. 40%) and the balance would be calibrated based on instructor discretion and informed by peer feedback (i.e. 60%). While this carries both benefits and risks, I was pleasantly surprised at how well this worked in practice to promote productive teamwork and organically calibrate results as I would have, without requiring my intervention. Talk about successful incentive design!
From the course delivery on a personal level, the three key objectives I prioritized were around 1) bringing to life and putting into practice the concepts of prior coursework, 2) expanding and integrating their mental models for organizational development at all stages, and 3) exposing students to increasing levels of discomfort and developing the courage to engage productively with seemingly insurmountable situations. All of this happened with the overarching goal of improving of my students’ readiness to face the challenges that they will encounter in life, based on the specific development areas they confidentially pointed out to me at the beginning of the semester. Two other things which worked well and my students found meaningful, both beyond the scope of teaching this course, was 1) to offer extracurricular learning resources based on their expressed areas of interest, and 2) inviting a series of guests to speak openly with my students around their professions (e.g. product management, venture investment, accounting, finance, marketing, operations, UI/UX design).
Those were the parts that went very well, and naturally, not everything does! It had originally been my intention to offer my students the courtesy of treating them like professionals, which I have found to be the best way to guide adult learners. However, this proved to be challenging for several reasons (e.g. they were new to virtual learning, pandemic realities) and I had to adapt to a different approach in order to better facilitate their learning and complement what they’d experienced thus far in their university journey. This was a massive departure from my day-to-day where I work with business owners, executives, and investors, and I had to considerably recalibrate my expectations (several times) for pre-existing knowledge and aptitudes so I could meet them where they were. All that being said, I found it refreshing and inspiring to interact with these undergraduate students who are getting ready to join the workforce and pursue graduate studies on their own paths.
The final assignment for this course was an individual Lessons Learned reflection asking for a thoughtful and thorough reflection on their experience with this course, from all the perspectives (e.g. personal journey week-to-week, course structure, subject matter covered, takeaways from guest speakers). While this is something I’d never encountered in an institutional education setting, I must highly recommend it for those courses intended to deliver holistic learning, for reasons obvious to educators. What I read in submissions for this assignment, paired with feedback on the university’s Course Evaluation, I am grateful for my students expressing that they found this to be a meaningful (though exceptionally challenging) experience that served as a book-end to their degree. Every student expressed how different aspects of the course pushed them out of their comfort zone, how they struggled and grew through the process, how they now better appreciate why + how concepts learned in their studies apply to desired fields of work outside the ‘business world’, how they had their pre-existing notions challenged across important dimensions of life, and how they are emerging at the end of our four months together feeling better prepared for what’s to come in their journeys.
Many of those closest to me have heard me say throughout recent months that teaching this course has made me feel ‘at home’, and how it’s felt like I am doing work that is an important part of my life’s calling. Funny enough, the Planner in me had originally worked it out to start teaching around 2025-2027. I am grateful to have had this experience early and look forward to how life unfolds from here!