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Conclusion
Our campus collaboration has been successful, producing a high-quality product while simultaneously affording students the oppor-
tunity to collaborate with faculty and Printing Services personnel to
create high-quality documents, assisting art and technical communi-
cation students to build their portfolios, and offering students a way
to gain recognition for their work.
References
Burnett, R. E. (2006). Technical communication. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth.
Drucker, P. F. (1959).Landmarks of tomorrow. New York: Harper.
Kostelnick, C., & Roberts, D. D. (1998).Designing visual language: Strategies for professional
communicators. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Lee S. Tesdell teaches in the technical communication program at Minnesota State
University, Mankato. His current project is to organize an international online learning
consortium linking instructors and students around the world. Address correspon-
dence to Lee S. Tesdell, 230 Armstrong Hall, Minnesota State University, Mankato,
MN 56001; email: [email protected].
BIZBLOCK: A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY TEACHING
AND LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Mary Y. Bowers
Christopher M. ScherpereelNorthern Arizona University
DOI: 10.1177/1080569908317083
UNIVERSITY BUSINESS EDUCATION is often criticized for not
meeting the needs of its stakeholders: students, graduates, and the busi-
ness community. Such criticism stems from evidence that business edu-
cation fails to deliver the cross-disciplinary learning required to build
essential business knowledge and competencies. To better serve busi-
ness school stakeholders, Northern Arizona Universitys W. A. Franke
College of Business (FCB) developed a course called BizBlock.
BizBlock integrates core undergraduate business content into a cross-disciplinary learning experience.
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Traditional business school curriculum is designed to functionally
train individuals who will fit into vertical organizations. Course con-
tent focuses on specialized disciplines that provide students with athorough grounding in their respective disciplines. This focus results
in a silo mentality: Students become technically proficient within
their discipline but never learn to effectively share and integrate
discipline-specific knowledge. Although businesses express the need
for change in pedagogy, business schools, especially at the under-
graduate level, continue to deliver the core body of knowledge com-
partmentalized by discipline.
BizBlock Overview
In the fall of 2000, the FCB recognized the need for change and
developed a cross-disciplinary course called BizBlock. Although the
course has evolved considerably during its 7-year history, the con-
cept of meeting stakeholder needs has remained the primary driver
for curricular design and implementation. The BizBlock design
mandate was simple in theory: Take the required, core 3-credit-hour
undergraduate courses in management, marketing, and businesscommunications and integrate the material for delivery in a single
9-credit-hour course block. The key directive of this mandate was
to integrate the three core courses, not just deliver the discipline-
specific content of the three courses sequentially.
Students in BizBlock are organized in teams of five to seven,
depending on class size. Student teams are presented with the prob-
lem of identifying a consumer need and developing a business plan
that fills that need. Lectures, assignments, exams, and activities aredesigned to motivate students to develop, improve, and augment
their understanding of their plan.
The resulting business plans are developed and revised throughout
the semester-long course. Before submitting the finished plan for
grading, students add details, reinforce concepts, and make correc-
tions to drafts. They then present the plan to the class and faculty
teaching team four times throughout the semester to gather extensive
feedback and improve delivery. Final plans are presented in a compet-
itive format before a panel of three to five venture capitalists, which
provides outside validation of the students work The team judged by
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the venture capitalist panel to be most deserving of funding is declared
the winning team and often given the opportunity to revise the plan for
organized undergraduate business plan competitions.BizBlock is facilitated by a team of three faculty instructors rep-
resenting the three disciplines included in the course. The course
meets twice a week, in four half-hour time blocks. Each instructor
issues a grade for the equivalent of 3 credit hours; thus, students will
receive three grades on their transcript, representing each of the three
discipline courses included in BizBlock. Each instructor grades inte-
grated assignments independently, and students often receive differ-
ent grades on the same assignment that reflect their ability to applydiscipline-specific knowledge in a cross-disciplinary context.
Teaching methodology includes facilitated discussions, breakout
sessions, guest speakers, and a limited number of interactive lec-
tures. The three faculty members remain in the classroom for the
entire class session to participate in discussions and encourage class
participation; instructors allocate lecture time based on what topics
or information the students need to complete the next section of the
business plan. Planning sessions occur before every class to distributelecture time. The faculty team also meets with individual students or
teams in cross-disciplinary consulting sessions.
The biggest hurdle in the development of BizBlock was faculty
perceptions of what basic course concepts from each discipline
should be included in the final course design. Faculty are trained to
become the classic sage on the stage, believing that each element
of content within their discipline is critical to student success.
Overcoming this hurdle required BizBlock faculty who were willing
to challenge the traditional teaching paradigm and embrace newer
methods, such as team teaching and cross-disciplinary integration.
The Relationship Between Cross-Disciplinary
Teaching and Integration
To be successful, a cross-disciplinary course must be integrated on
three levels: the primary assessment outcome (in BizBlock, this out-
come would be the professional business plan and presentation), lec-
tures, and the syllabus. The cross-disciplinary objective cannot be
effectively achieved by integrating only one or even two of these
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components. Such extensive integration requires commitment and
shared vision on the part of the faculty. It also requires the faculty to
constantly plan and then be flexible enough to change the plansometimes minutes before a class. In addition, cross-disciplinary
teaching requires faculty who are knowledgeable, or at least com-
fortably familiar with, the other course disciplines, to provide con-
sistent guidance for student learning.
Integrating the Assessment Outcome
As stated earlier, cross-disciplinary courses are not stand-aloneclasses taught sequentially but rather discipline-specific courses
delivered in an overlapping or overarching manner. The first step in
developing a cross-disciplinary course is to find an assessment out-
come or primary student assignment that can only be completed
using the topical material from each of the classes included in the
cross-disciplinary course. In the first iteration of BizBlock, this
assessment outcome was the actual formation of a business. After two
semesters, faculty decided this goal was too complex and difficult for
undergraduate students to complete in 16 weeks. The outcome
assessment was changed to a business plan, and this approach has
evolved and been enhanced during the past 7 years.
Students complete the business plan in sections called drafts. Each
draft is due and submitted after class discussion of relevant topical
material. Because the plan is written by student teams, each team sub-
mits three identical drafts, and each BizBlock faculty member then
reads and assesses the draft based on his or her discipline-specific
perspective. The marketing faculty member comments on the mar-keting content, the management faculty member comments on man-
agement content, and the business communication faculty member
edits the draft for grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and clarity.
These drafts are returned to the student teams for further revision.
After all the drafts have been through this process, they are combined
to create the final business plan. However, teams first submit the com-
pleted plan to the business communication instructor, for one final
edit. The turnaround time on this draft is usually 3 days, so the teamscan make any necessary revisions before submitting the final plan.
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Integrating Lectures
Students write and submit drafts after relevant material has beenintroduced and discussed in class. For example, before the market
and industry analysis draft is due, students will have learned about
performing a SWOT analysis (management), conducting market
research (marketing), and referencing source material (business com-
munication). Although it may not always be the outcome, the goal is
for each faculty member to explain material that dovetails into the
other discipline lectures or is necessary for the next assignment.
Integrating Syllabi
As every educator knows, creating and modifying a syllabus can be
a time-consuming, complex task. This task becomes even more
daunting when one syllabus is actually a combination of three.
However, because the students first real introduction of BizBlock is
through the syllabus, it must reflect the cross-disciplinary nature of
the class. By presenting one integrated syllabus the first day of class,
students immediately begin to understand and appreciate how cross-
disciplinary teaching and learning occur.
Such integration requires that faculty enforce the same classroom
policies and procedures and adhere to the class assignment and
activities schedule presented in the syllabus. A faculty member who
changes the syllabus on a regular basis without consulting the other
instructors on the team confuses the students and, more important,
models ineffective team behavior.
Conclusion
Many business programs have recognized the need to respond to their
stakeholders challenge to more effectively develop essential business
knowledge and competencies. Curricular redesign efforts have resulted
in courses such as BizBlock that achieve greater integration across dis-
ciplines. By stretching functional boundaries, cross-discipline integra-
tion efforts appear to better prepare students for work in decentralized
organizations. In addition, these courses give faculty a new apprecia-
tion for the challenges of preparing students to effectively function ina complex, interdisciplinary work environment.
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Mary Y. Bowers is a senior lecturer in management in the W. A. Franke College of
Business at Northern Arizona University. She received her MBA from the University of
Toledo and teaches courses in business communications and organizational behavior.
Her research interests include gender communication, team teaching, and group
dynamics. Address correspondence to Mary Bowers, W. A. Franke College of
Business, Northern Arizona University, PO Box 15066, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5066;
email: [email protected].
Christopher M. Scherpereel is an associate professor of management at Northern
Arizona University. He holds degrees from Notre Dame, Georgia Institute of
Technology, and New York University and received his PhD in industrial engineering and
management science from Northwestern University. His research interests include
decision-making analysis, real options, entrepreneurship, simulation, and strategy.
Address correspondence to Chris Scherpereel, Northern Arizona University, W. A.Franke College of Business, PO Box 15066, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5066; email:
THE VALUE OF STEPPING OUTSIDE YOUR NORMAL
ROLE: LESSONS LEARNED FROM SERVING ON
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY TEAMS
Kathleen VanceBritish Columbia Institute of Technology
DOI: 10.1177/1080569908317083
FOR MY ENTIRE CAREER at my technical institute, I have been
working with faculty in other departments to acquire in-depth
knowledge of the communication tasks and attitudes that will be
expected of my students in their future workplaces so that I can
teach them the strategies and principles of business communicationmost likely to guarantee success. I have worked with, among others,
faculty in financial management (Vance & Fitzpatrick, 1994), in
occupational health nursing, and, most recently, in mining and in
my institutes Learning and Teaching Centre (LTC) to develop
an Internet workspace for students to use to complete their gradua-
tion projects. This most recent cross-disciplinary work has rein-
forced earlier lessons and brought home new ones on how we, as
communication faculty, can best benefit from our cross-disciplinary
experiences.
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