Corina Raduescu, The University of Sydney Page 1

Linking the Real World to the ClassroomTheme: Work-integrated and service-learning for cultural competence

Practice ExamplePresented byCorina RaduescuBusiness School, Business Information Systems Disciplinecorina.raduescu@sydney.edu.au

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Agenda

1. Background2. Cultural Competence3. Challenges in Business Information Systems (BIS)

Education 4. Design Thinking: The Driving Framework5. Teaching and Learning Strategies 6. Insights7. Conclusion8. Future Direction

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1. Background

INFS3070 Business Analysis in Practice

– First time offered in 2013. – Enhancing the employability skills and graduate attributes essential tosuccessful complex business problems solving through effective business requirements analysis. – Focus on:

– hard skills - tools, techniques, methodologies used by business analysts

– soft skills - communication, facilitation, negotiation, diversity, and creativity

– Heavy practical emphasis with hands-on exercises on real case scenarios and co-delivery with industry partners.

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2. Cultural Competence

“ … a set of congruent behaviours, attitudes and policies that come together in a system, agency or among

professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural

situations.”

Operationally defined, cultural competence is:

“ … the integration and transformation of knowledge about individuals and groups of people into specific standards, policies, practices, and attitudes used in

appropriate cultural settings to increase the quality of services, thereby producing better outcomes.”

Centre for Cultural Competence, Australiawww.ccca.com.au

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A Learning Journey Towards the Real World

1. Awareness of one’s cultural views: understand diversity-related values and beliefs in order to recognise barriers and opportunities for learning and development.

2. Attitude: realise how values and beliefs impact cross-cultural effectiveness by becoming open to different views and opinions; positive attitude.

3. Knowledge of different cultural practices and views: know how culture impacts problem solving in cross-cultural interactions.

4. Skills: ability to effectively experience or manage cultural differences; cross-cultural communication and problem solving skills.

http://wehearyou.acecqa.gov.au/2014/07/10/what-does-it-mean-to-be-culturally-competent/

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3. Challenges … and Opportunities in BIS Education

– Accommodating diverse groups of multicultural learners in Business School

– Equipping graduates with the necessary skillset to perform with competence in global, multicultural, and fast changing technological environments.

– The nature of the future workforce and business response to on-going change present us as educators with particular challenges:– Existing ‘struggles’ to find “appropriately skilled talent” in a rapidly

changing global economy (PwC 2015). – Data, digital technologies and innovation are widely recognised as key

drivers in creating a competitive and sustainable economy (CEDA 2015; PwC 2015).

– Australia is “only average in its competency and capacity to innovate” (OECD report cf PwC 2015, 13).

– Building a strong innovation ecosystem requires business leaders and educators to work together and co-design programs that will not only develop strong technology skills, but also “boundary-crossing” skills (e.g., leadership, problem-solving, communication, cultural competence, design thinking, critical thinking, analytical, curiosity and imagination) (CEDA 2014; PwC 2015).

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4. Design Thinking: The Driving Framework

Image source: http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/design-thinking/

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4. Design Thinking (Brown 2008)

“A human centric prototype-driven process for solving problems and innovation.”

Image source: http://dschool.stanford.edu/dgift/

Becoming aware

Leveraging attitudes and knowledge

Applying knowledge and

skills

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5. Teaching & Learning Strategies

Our aim was to expose students to cultural and diversity sensitivity by continuously engaging them in problem solving activities that required them to:

1. understand and leverage the strengths and weaknesses rooted in both their domain specific knowledge and

backgrounds; 2. to actively embrace and apply those

skills.

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Teaching & Learning Strategies (1)

Lectures and Guest Speakers – We created an environment where the practice

continuously challenged the theory by co-delivering with industry partners to expose students to both perspectives

– We introduced topics that challenged students to think outside the box and dealt with uncertainty

– We invited guest speakers from diverse backgrounds and multinational organisations to explain how culture and diversity are cultivated and essential to successful organisations and workplace – CEO/ Founder of an app development organisation,

Change managers, former students currently working as Business analysts, software developers (Atlassian), IBM Technical Manager, Yammer/ Microsoft Customer Experience Manager

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Teaching & Learning Strategies (2)

Role Play & Case-based Exercises– We asked students to continuously engage in

brainstorming, interviewing, workshops followed by briefing sessions for solving problems while playing different roles

– We set up exercises to undertake same small project using different project management approaches (e.g., waterfall, agile, mixed) to experiment the differences and reflect/ compare the result with the theoretical expectations (we had surprises!)

– We asked students to use agile methods that welcome change and collaborative technologies (i.e., Confluence, Yammer) in their projects

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Exercises Example

– In groups of 5-6 students, think for a minute, then share with your group the one word that you would use to describe the effectiveness of your communication. Then select one word that best describes your group communication practices.

– Create a set of values for each group to measure the group view of success by comparing their group values to their own standards and expectations. – Brainstorm success values and reflect on them – Read what other groups have written – Identify common values/ reflection – Learn about those you don’t understand – Score the values that are the most important for your

team up to 5 points– Discuss the commonalities and the success values with

highest votes

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Teaching & Learning Strategies (3)

Field Trips– We took students in a tour of CBA Darling Quarter

premises to raise awareness of the future workplace and the innovation process in leading organisations

Exploration– We delivered classes in various venues in both

Darlington and CBD campuses to raise students’ ability to adapt to new contexts

– We continuously challenged students to think outside the box and enhance group creativity by organising design thinking sessions to elicit future technologies requirements in order to embrace ideation and diversity http://rippleffectgroup.com/2014/04/17/design-led-business-analysis-in-practice-at-the-university-of-sydney-business-school/

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Teaching & Learning Strategies (4)

Paper and Opinion Discussions– We sought to discuss and critique papers and opinion

pieces that challenge the status quo, focus on diversity, change, adaptability, and boundary crossing skills in projects– Shore (2008), “Systematic biases and culture in project failures” – Snowden et. al. (2007), “A Leaders Framework for Decision Making”– Kahneman (2011), “Think Fast and Slow”– Raduescu and Marjanovic (2011), “Towards Educating Boundary

Spanning Professionals across BPM and BI Domains”– McAfee (2009), “Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your

Organization's Toughest Challenges”– Brown (2008), “Design Thinking” – Pink (2005), “A Whole New Mind”– Hinchcliffe and Kim (2012), “Social Business by Design”– Change management: “Influencer Self-Assessment”– The Case for Social Business: Industry papers and opinions, e.g.,

Deloitte

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Teaching & Learning Strategies (5)

Assessment– We set up a real case scenario brought in by the industry partner

– Project Brief– Business Requirements Document– Solution Prototype

– We exposed students to uncertainty by presenting them with the consequences of the current problems; they had to explore what the real problems are as opposed to be given the problems from start

– We tried to move away from a structured to an uncertain environment– We created tasks for student collaboration and exposure to diversity:

– conducting interviews, focus groups, and brainstorming with industry partners (we developed “Fact sheets” as answers if the right question was asked)

– writing project briefs, documenting business requirements (we created templates)– designing prototypes – incorporating the on-going feedback

– We asked students to pitch their final prototypes to senior industry partners in a boardroom setting facing unexpected questions at times

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Teaching & Learning Strategies (6)

Reflective Journal– We asked students to select and reflect on

various topics of interest form the readings or from the guest speakers by: – Explaining how the chosen topic relates to the Business

Analyst (BA) profession and Business Analysis tasks (e.g., analyse the relevance and value of the topic to the requirements process, project delivery, change management, implementation plan, etc.);

– Discussing how did the topic change their way of thinking and ways in which they can incorporate ideas from the topic into their group assignments;

– Discussing what lessons have they learnt from the readings that are useful for their future career skills and work practices (e.g., good practices, challenges, avoiding pitfalls, etc.).

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6. Insights (1): Awareness & Positive Attitudes

1. Questioning opinions – Through discussions and reflections of readings,

students have become open to accepting other opinions and see this as an advantage to their group work.

– They realised the “cult-like adoration of leaders” is a practice in their university projects, when students with good result are unquestioned by other group members.

– Therefore they accepted that in projects that address complex problems and require creative solutions, they would greatly benefit from collective thinking and diversity of ideas and perspectives.

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Insights (2): Awareness & Positive Attitudes

2. Accepting and integrating diverse values– Students have displayed positive attitudes towards the

importance of communication and social interaction. – They have suggested that in the future they will

approach the group work differently than the past; in past they worked individualistically with some intermittent discussion followed by submitting separate sections.

– Now they argue they will endeavour to approach group work more professionally and allow discussion to constitute a larger part of their work and efforts, to help solidify a group mentality.

– They will investment trust in their group members and view projects as a social process (Sauer and Reich, p.188).

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Insights (3): Knowledge and Skills

3. Integrating diverse knowledge and skills – Students expressed that following in class work and readings,

they discussed everything together to build up each others’ ideas, despite conflicting views at times.

– They worked towards creating a comfortable environment for sharing opinions; and based on this approach, as a stakeholder group, they were happy with their final assignment solutions.

– Students referred to Snowden’s notion of “entrained thinking” as an inhibitor to good decision making; “once you have a solution in mind it is a challenge to deviate.” They saw the value of this concept and how it can be applied to solving problems.

– In an example in class, students were told to think of a solution with the vague requirement “4 wheels and a motor”. Then they were shown an image of the solution, a lawnmower. This highlighted how vague requirements can be interpreted differently. The facilitator asked students to stop thinking about the lawnmower solution to show how entrained thinking can result in incorrect solutions.

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Insights (4): Knowledge and Skills

4. Understanding and integrating diverse skills – Students engaged more and more in practicing real

collaboration in their projects. For example, one student noted that their thinking beforehand was that if there is an excellent leader in a group, it is possible to come up with the best outcome.

– That view has changed as the student read some of the materials and now the student believed that all the members of the group should have skills and qualities such as leadership and communication.

– As a consequence of this process, the student admitted that for future group project, they were going through, they shared these thoughts with our group members so they practises on these skills and qualities to make the most efficient decision making and deliver beneficial value.

– They have also acknowledged the value of collaboration and work alongside individuals from other disciplines.

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Insights (5): Knowledge and Skills

5. Integrating autonomy and collaboration– Throughout the entire UoS we have worked towards developing a

sense of proactivity, need of change in order to become agile in future work.

– One concept we emphasised was “responsive organisations” and the frameworks and tools used to achieve this. As a result, students acknowledged that on a smaller scale within their own group, they were behaving as a responsive organisation. For each stage of the project, they would decide as a team what direction to take, then assign sections of work for each group member.

– In this way, they allowed autonomy for members to complete the task using the method they preferred. They took responsibility for their own work, but at the same time they collaborated using google documents so all team members could contribute and give feedback to any section that was completed by any team member. This collaborative document encouraged transparency, they communicated freely and worked like a network rather than working on separate sections in several word documents.

– As a result of these experiences students now understand how becoming a responsive organisation is beneficial not only to the organisation’s productivity but also for the employees’ engagement and happiness with the work that they are conducting.

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Insights (6): Knowledge and Skills

6. Experimentation through formal-informal working mechanisms We attempted to encourage students curiosity and experimentation. – Currently, one issue we face is that Business Analysts do

not seek significant innovation but focusing on the best alternative out of a few solutions.

– Students found that they did exactly the same in their group assignment. Instead of thinking of new ways to tackle the issue on hand they looked at the best alternative out of the products available in the market. They learned that by incorporating experimentation, it could allow for new solutions to be created through exploration of constraints and by posing questions in ways that have not been done previously.

– Students found that particular to their group experience was the informality of the group meetings. Students believed the overall dynamic of the group is also a significant factor to the success of the project. The fact that the group dynamic had very high energy and engagement during group meetings was reflected in their higher quality work.

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Insights (7): USE Results 2013-2014

70.00%75.00%80.00%85.00%90.00%

77.80%

86.10%

75.00% 75.00%77.80%

84.40%87.50%

81.25%

75.00%

84.40%

Strongly Agree & Agree %

2013 2014

Response rate: • 92% in 2013, N=39• 80% in 2014, N=42

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7. Conclusion: What Have We Achieved?

– Designed a learning environment to increase students’ exposure and awareness of accepting and embracing diversity

– Facilitated learning experiences for students to become open to diverse values, beliefs, and opinions

– Designed learning activities for students to practice problem solving and develop better working patterns in diverse environments through cross-cultural interactions

– Received positive insights on students’ learning outcomes and experiences

– Observed an increase in the quality of student work outcomes

– We had six students who have been offered job opportunities by the industry partners

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8. Future Direction

– I welcome ideas/ suggestions on future direction– Develop an Evaluation plan to validate and

verify the claims in 2016 – methods, techniques?

– Conference -> Journal paper– Open to collaboration/ cross faculty studies

– …

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Thank You!

References can be provided by request corina.raduescu@sydney.edu.au