Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/57337
CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGY Technology at Work from any place at any time. Enabling this far-flung modern workplace is a whole host of technologies, from T It's essential to have students use technologies in the classroom that they will encounter in the business world. by Lee Schlenker and Adam Mendelson e-mail to cell phones to Web conferencing to process management software. To be successful in business today, every executive must be comfortable with many of these new technologies. And business schools—whether they are enrolling first-year MBAs or customizing programs for high-powered executives—must prepare students for workplaces that will only become more dependent on IT. Many schools have added technology components to their programs. But we believe these computer-aided programs are valuable only when they link content and software directly to real-world business. We refer to this approach as work- based pedagogy that relies on authentic technology. By teaching students to use workplace technologies most effectively, we can better prepare them to work, communicate, and interact in the 21st-century workplace. Imperfect Approaches Work-based pedagogy is built on the premise that management education should focus on the imperfect realities of the workplace rather than on the ide- alized models of best practice. Too often, management education operates on the principle that there is "one best way" of doing business. Local context and culture are considered anomalies that should be controlled and corrected, an attitude that ignores the realities of chaordic markets—that is, markets operating according to a kind of ordered chaos. Students are taught how to manage under perfect conditions, which rarely hold true in the real world. Management education also is justly criticized for spending too much time teaching students about explicit practices and not enough time teaching them how to apply those practices in the workplace—in effect, concentrating on know that instead of know how. Work-based pedagogy places much more emphasis on know how. Schools that follow a work-based pedagogy embrace several guiding principles: n They base learning objectives on authentic, on-the-job skills, tasks, or proj- ects that are collaborative and cross-disciplinary. n They design activities to help learners understand specific industries, markets, and organizations in terms of space, time, and culture. n They develop course content that enables learners to acquire skills and knowledge applicable to future tasks. n They make sure learning outputs are of intrinsic value to each student's work environment. 22 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 he nature of business has radically changed in the past few decades. The image of the nine-to-five office has been increasingly replaced by the notion of a business staffed by part-timers and consultants working on an as-needed basis. For many, "work" is no longer a physical place they go to perform professional tasks, but rather an activity that can be conducted