Nonlinear analysis can improve the educational experience by providing real time outcome measures. This article provides a new perspective on the dynamics that occur in the classroom between the instructor and the class. It describes a specific application in which the interaction of selected classroom behaviors are measured throughout the semester to provide feedback to the instructor. The approach provides timely information that permits the instructor to adapt and maximize the educational experience for students. The results provide new insights into the dynamics of the classroom and suggest means by which it can be more effectively managed.

This paper presents an assessment of the effectiveness of the University of Idaho’s integrated business curriculum, the IBC, which presents the junior-level core business material in a series of integrated modules. In 1994 members of the Department of Business presented a pilot offering of the IBC to 34 volunteer students. In the fall of 1999 alumni from this pilot were surveyed to assess the extent to which certain curricular learning goals were perceived to have been achieved by their experience in IBC. A similar survey was sent to a group from the same graduating cohort as the IBC volunteers but who had taken their junior core in the traditional format. We found that there were significant differences on both perceptual and objective outcome measures between the alumni groups who participated in the IBC and the traditional curriculum.

This paper discusses the business pedagogy developed at Eastern Connecticut State University. This program uses entrepreneurship as the focal point for integration of the business disciplines of finance, management, accounting, operations, organizational behavior, human resource management, organization theory and marketing. Application of computer skills, communication (written and oral), research, critical thinking, writing, project management, and teamwork is achieved through the experiential component of the program. Students are required to work in teams to create a business plan, a document in which students must demonstrate how the business disciplines are integrated. The results of this new program are encouraging.

This experiential exercise, based on research conducted by Eden and Aviram [1993], encourages students to see the connection between a concept from psychology, self-efficacy, and the working world. A primary objective is gaining an understanding of the information cues from which self-efficacy beliefs are generated. It also brings home the point that self-efficacy, rather than being a fixed personality trait, is a malleable self-perception with significant behavioral consequences. Small groups of students design a workshop to improve unemployed workers' beliefs in their self-efficacy for regaining employment. A systematic debriefing process is presented to maximize the benefits of this learning experience.

While creativity is generally misunderstood and ignored within the traditional management paradigm, it is also acknowledged as being of critical importance to the future effectiveness of organizations. Managers may learn to understand and appreciate creativity within themselves, and others, through experience with poetry. Towards that end, definitions of creativity are reviewed, the link between managerial decision-making and creativity is established, and the rationale of using poetry as a means of experiencing creativity is explained. Finally, poems composed about management by MBA students are shared and a report of a poetry writing assignment for MBA’s is provided.

This paper describes an interdisciplinary (finance, marketing, and organizational behavior), behavioral simulation, Movie Moguls, in which students work in groups to organize and run movie distribution companies. This simulation is used in a team-taught course for sophomore business students that is part of a complete revamping of a business school curriculum. This revamping involved the replacement of core introductory courses in individual disciplines with four interdisciplinary courses. The simulation described is the framework around which the first of these interdisciplinary courses is organized. Learning objectives, development process, content and mechanics of the simulation, and student and faculty reactions are discussed.