Shifting Paradigms in Management Education: What Happens When We Take Groups Seriously?

Abstract

This article describes a European full-immersion capstone MBA course in which andragogical principles were designed in from the start. In the Business Navigator didactic model, roles of teachers and students are reversed, with lecturers transformed into coaches and students transformed into active learners. Groupware technologysupports case teams of 30 to 35 students who spend more than 90% of their time in smaller teams solving complex multidisciplinary problems. Because of a huge investment in multimedia case materials and technology, students face information overload in a safe classroom environment, in which teams are expected to make mistakes, reflect, and learn from their choices. This article describes the program context, the didactic model, the course activities, the centrality of information technology, and the results of a questionnaire asking participants to describe their experience, enriched by other data.