How can Management students see that concepts from class have real-world applications? Having already made some preliminary use of the “reality” show, The Apprentice, in my Management Principles course, I decided to redesign an assignment to engage students with this current cultural phenomenon. The results of this experiment exceeded my expectations in terms of student involvement and learning.
Background of the Challenge
I teach Management Principles, a class serving dual purposes at UWSP. As a gateway class for our Business major, it provides the foundation for more advanced work. At the same time, the course is meant to be a broad survey of management ideas for students who will not take any further business courses. As this course is recommended or required for about a dozen other majors on campus, there is always a substantial presence of non-majors (often approaching 50%) in every Management Principles class.
When The Apprentice television show began airing on NBC in January 2004, I wondered if I could use it as a tool for engaging both the Business and non-Business majors in my class. On this “reality”-style television show, each week the contestants must work as teams to complete a business challenge. Challenges have included tasks such as developing an advertising campaign, designing a new product, and managing a large public event. I thought the “real world” aspect of the program would appeal to the Business students in my class. At the same time, I wondered if the more entertaining aspects of the show would appeal to the non-Business majors who were, after all, more typical of the mass audience of the show. Perhaps the show would be sufficiently entertaining that people, including my non-Business students, would inadvertently learn a little about business as they tuned in.
I admit that I was skeptical about how much educational value The Apprentice would provide. Before it began in 2004, I had avoided watching any other shows in the “reality” genre. Most such “reality” shows produced before it had seemed to be quite farfetched. However, having read some positive descriptions of the show in the press, and having heard a colleague say he had enjoyed it, I decided to try watching The Apprentice. I invited my students at the time to do the same.
The show turned out to be better than I expected. There were tasks that were so difficult that contestants were forced to cooperate with people they detested. There were unexpected crises that had to be overcome. There were bursts of creativity and demonstrations of great leadership, along with some truly awful ideas and terrible leadership. There were some contestants who were portrayed as being of good character and having integrity, and others who seemed evil and conniving.
In 2004, after each episode aired, I set aside the first ten minutes or so of class for a discussion of what had transpired. We shared our pain, our shock and our admiration for what the contestants had accomplished. With a dash of playfulness, we made predictions about upcoming shows and offered recommendations about future strategies.
Thus, even before I participated in the FACETS program in the spring semester of 2005, I had already experimented somewhat with integrating
The Apprentice into my Management Principles class.
Thus, even before I participated in the FACETS program in the spring semester of 2005, I had already experimented somewhat with integrating The Apprentice into my Management Principles class. The show provided the students and me with something in common to discuss informally before getting to the “real work” scheduled for that day’s class. Our bantering about developments on the show was probably pretty similar to other faculty and students chatting about how their favorite sports team had recently performed.
New Idea from the FACETS Program
I participated in the spring 2005 FACETS program. As I listened to the speakers, perused the supplementary materials and talked with other participants, I began to think that it could be beneficial to make The Apprentice a more prominent part of my Management Principles class.
A number of things I learned about the new millennial generation of students had connections to the use of The Apprentice in my course:
- Today’s students crave shared experiences. Watching the show’s progress together was something we could share, similar to rooting for our favorite team.
- Today’s students expect up-to-date cultural references and tune out mention of dated examples. What could be more current than a pop culture phenomenon developing right now?
- Today’s students see themselves as equally qualified to comment on topics as their professors. With The Apprentice, they would have as much chance of predicting the winner, as I would have.
- Today’s students frequently operate as multi-taskers. Watching The Apprentice would serve double duty as entertainment and homework.
- Today’s students seek connections and community. By sharing in the common experience of the developments on the show, they would gain a common bond and basis for interaction with their peers.
While I had thought our informal class discussions of The Apprentice had gone well in 2004, I was surprised at how few of my students were watching the show. Typically, when I first talked to them about the show, I would find that only two or three students in a class of thirty knew about the show and/or were already watching it. After I explained the relevance of the show, I would usually get about six-ten students who watched it each week. Despite the fact that my students were part of the target demographic of the show, and probably shared the contestants’ aspirations to be successful professionals, they were not flocking to the show in huge numbers.
I decided to redesign a component of my Management Principles class to further encourage watching the show. With this redesign, I would be appealing to the preferences of the Millennials while still achieving course objectives.
I required my students to participate in six-week long online discussion forums. The students were responsible for composing an original posting of one-two pages and then responding to the postings of at least two other students. The overall objective of the forums was to have students realize that the concepts they studied had relevance in the real world. The students would leave my course with a deeper understanding of the core concepts if they did not separate what they learned in class from their other experiences. The discussion forums provided opportunities for the students to have those “aha” moments that every teacher strives to provide. Previous assignments for online forums involved reading and analyzing articles in Business Week or a mini-case from the text.
The students also had to go beyond observation and venture into analysis of the situation. Acting as “consultants,” the students were to tell their online groups what should have happened, or what they would have done.
As a new twist, in the spring 2005 semester, I added the choice of watching and commenting on a recent episode of The Apprentice for some of the discussion forums. In their online postings, I challenged the students to explain specifically how concepts we studied related to what was happening on the show. The students also had to go beyond observation and venture into analysis of the situation. Acting as “consultants,” the students were to tell their online groups what should have happened, or what they would have done. This redesign of the online discussion assignments picked up on two additional characteristics of the Millennials: their preferences for variety and choices. The addition of The Apprentice into some of the online discussion forums meant that the students could work on a current article one week and an Apprentice episode the next, and that they had control over whether to write about The Apprentice or not.
Outcomes of the Project
Upon completing the past semester with three sections (totaling about 100 students) of Management Principles students being offered the opportunity to analyze The Apprentice in online discussion forums, I can report that I am very pleased with the results. The content of the show (somewhat uncertain when I designed the assignments) was worthwhile studying, the quality of the students’ postings was strong and the students themselves reported positive experiences.
First, the show itself was consistently worth watching. Compared to when the show began a year ago, the challenges for the contestants have become more complex and more realistic. Now that the show is established, large companies such as Home Depot and Domino’s Pizza have eagerly become co-sponsors of the show, offering the contestants business challenges using their products. This past season in Spring 2005 had an additional twist: the contestants were divided into teams based on whether they had attended college (the “book smart” team) or not (the “street smart” team). I will admit I was a little worried when the non-college team took an early lead in the competition---what kind of message would be sent by the defeat of the college team? But the college grads soon pulled themselves together and made a respectable showing.
Second, across the board, the students did an excellent job of achieving the objectives of the assignment while discussing episodes of The Apprentice:
- The students made many connections between what happened on the show and core management topics including teamwork, leadership, communication and culture. One student commented, “I feel it is always useful to be constantly making connections between material we are taught in one way, i.e., the classroom, and material that is presented to us in a different way.”
- The overall quality of the students’ postings was quite high, with only a handful of assignments being of marginal quality. The students put a great deal of effort into analyzing what they had observed and building convincing arguments to support their conclusions.
- Almost certainly, more students watched the show because it was connected to an opportunity to earn points in the course. According to informal feedback I collected at the end of the semester, only four out of 90 students said they had never watched the show. Three-fourths of the students responding in the feedback said that they had used the show for at least one posting in the online forum.
- The show provided a shared experience and the basis for connecting with other students. According to student feedback 87% said that they discussed the show with other students, face-to-face, at least some weeks of the semester. A much smaller, yet still very encouraging, number (22%) reported that they had at least sometimes watched the show with other students. As one student said, “[I]t was a nice conversation topic with my friends who were also interested in the show.”
If I had not taken the time to gather student feedback on this assignment, I would have assumed that students who did not write about
The Apprentice had not been interested in the show---an incorrect inference, as it turns out.
Third, the students themselves have described the experience as very beneficial. Only three students assessed the incorporation of the show into the course as having added no value to the course. A strong 55% reported that the use of the show had been very valuable to the course, with the remainder indicating that the show had been of some value. Note that there was a significant minority of the students who, while choosing not to base their online postings on the show, still concluded that the use of the show had been valuable. If I had not taken the time to gather student feedback on this assignment, I would have assumed that students who did not write about The Apprentice had not been interested in the show---an incorrect inference, as it turns out. Furthermore, of the students who did compose postings based on the show, all but two reported that analyzing the show had helped them to better understand concepts we had covered in class.
In explaining their reasons for thinking that the use of the show in the course had been valuable, the students frequently mentioned that:
- The show benefited from being almost like a real business. “It’s good to see how business tactics can be used in the ‘real world.’”
- They could apply the lessons of the show in their own careers. “[We can] see the mistakes that can be made…so we can learn from those mistakes and not make the same ones in the future.”
- They were having fun. “[I]t made the course a little more entertaining and really brought something new into the course as well.”
- They were thinking differently. “…[B]y watching the show while taking Bus. 380 you get a different perspective than if you were to watch it just because you liked the show.”
Some other notable comments included thoughts on that:
- The show was an eye-opener. “[The show] was very valuable because it showed that it is a lot of work to be a leader/management. Most people think that being a leader/manager is all standing around supervising and delegating, but there is a lot more to it than that.”
- It is beneficial to have an almost first-hand experience. “I believe that culture is something that is easy to understand if you see it in action, but hard to understand [while] reading it.”
- They would likely continue watching the show. “I got really addicted to the show!”
Of the students who did few or no postings on the show, their most common comments were that they thought the show was entertaining but not educational, that the show was unrealistic and did not show the whole picture of what was happening, that they were too busy to watch the show regularly and that they preferred to analyze current articles.
Afterthoughts—Looking Backwards
While I am teaching students about management concepts, I feel that part of my job is to model good management approaches. Employees can often be motivated to do better work if they are able to enjoy the process. The incorporation of The Apprentice contributed to the positive atmosphere I strive to create in class. With this assignment, the students could see that while hard work is expected, it is also possible to enjoy one’s work. This was an indirect but important lesson I trust the students took away from our course. As future managers, they should understand that there everything at work does not need to be serious in order for goals to be accomplished.
My experience with making The Apprentice a substantial part of my Management Principles class shows that such adjustments can be made without sacrificing academic objectives.
I now have a better sense of the logistics associated with this assignment. I will continue to offer the option of commenting on the show, but it will not be a requirement. (Many students said they appreciated the choice.) I will continue to tape the show and make it available at the library for those who missed the broadcast. Based on a student suggestion, I will recruit student volunteers to tape the shows for my distance education students in Marshfield and Wausau. I still want students to develop the habit of regularly reading Business Week or a similar publication. Therefore, The Apprentice will be an option for only half of the discussion forums.
As we learned in the FACETS seminars, we faculty have to adjust our teaching styles in order to successfully reach the latest generation of students. My experience with making The Apprentice a substantial part of my Management Principles class shows that such adjustments can be made without sacrificing academic objectives.