International Journal of Higher Education Management

Evidence of learning and student growth is a prized goal for programs and instructors, but is often difficult to measure with precision, especially for concepts like problem solving or critical thinking. This paper presents an experience teaching a core business course, operations management, at a Midwest (USA) regional campus that focuses on problem solving where the instructional choices are informed by theory, evidence in the literature, and author experiences. A guided problem-based learning (PBL) approach to teaching is employed using Excel exercises that are presented using interrelated narratives or dialogs. A conceptual narrative conveys why the problem being solved is important to organizations and the students’ careers. A technical narrative presents theories, tools and techniques used to solve the problems in an accessible dialog, emphasizing the how and why the problem is solved a certain way, and how those techniques/tools can be used to solve other problems. The dialogs encourage student metacognition of what they are learning, why it is important, and how it can be used more generally. The course is offered both fully online and in-person using a flipped approach, i.e. lectures are presented via videos and classroom time is spent solving problems in workshop fashion. Results show students appreciate the guided PBL approach, find the class worthwhile and realistic, find they have a better understanding of how to solve problems generally, and how the concepts fit into their careers. Improvements are indicated for achieving meaningful student interaction for learning and for gaining improved confidence in their own specific problem-solving abilities.

This paper presents an examination of the student response to a small-scale experiment in Student Centred Learning (SCL) in undergraduate business classes. This experiment tests the benefits and the impact of Student Centred Learning approach. Also, this approach will help to discover and identify students at risk. This experiment examined the twelve principles of SCL in the Faculty of Business Administration, Economics & Political Science (BAEPS) as a part of teaching and learning strategy. Feedback was collected from three students’ groups undertaking different modules at three levels within the Business Department.  Each module applied SCL for the first 6 weeks of the module and the rest of semester applied traditional teaching methods. The three groups were undergraduate business students’ classes during one semester at the British University in Egypt (BUE). The feedback from the majority of the three groups reported positive practises. This paper presented a justification and explanation for success and pitfalls in student centred learning and recommended creative interactive teaching strategies. This experiment proved that SCL implementation, together with a traditional approach in teaching and learning, is more effective for undergraduate university students learning route.

In global education, the importance of character and service cannot be sidelined. This study determined the character and service dimensions of global competencies for 21st century learning from the perspectives of students, teachers, school administrators and professionals in various disciplines. The results identified the salient character and service traits of globally-competent individuals in terms of knowledge, values, skills, and behavior.  Also discussed are the strategies and learning environment to facilitate the integration of character education and service-learning in school.

Today’s businesses are investing heavily in IT transformational tools to keep pace with the 21st century’s ceaseless advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence. However, business leaders are realizing those investments go nowhere without the creative minds to discover new ways to converge technology advances in software clustering algorithms, Big Data Analytics, data lake deployments, blockchains, chatbots, and social media apps with customer engagement for growth opportunities
 
Traditional business skills are no longer viable in a globalized digital ecosystem. Departmentalized linear and vertical thinking skill competencies have been usurped by the value chain of integrative, non-linear and lateral thinking. Complex problems arising from unfamiliar and multifaceted complications caused by globalization and technology advances need nontraditional, unconventional and atypical responses. The intellectual agility of the creative mind uncovers new associative links by converging disparate knowledge domains to provide innovative solutions.  

Converging different ideas from different knowledge domains to form new patterns of thought has become one of the most valuable 21st century workforce skills. Yet, an overwhelming amount of higher education institutions separate, silo, and isolate one subject area of knowledge from another. A liberal art “breadth of knowledge” is no longer sufficient without establishing a methodology that provides a convergence of knowledge.

It is the finding of this paper that the case study of The North Coast College demonstrates a pedagogical model which converge disparate knowledge domains to redefine education for the 21st century.

The North Coast College’s Principle of Convergence pedagogy is a response to the changing 21st century business environment and its need for “transdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and multidisciplinarity” minds to stimulate idea generation for innovation. The 4 Layers of The North Coast College’s Principles of Convergence Plan are: The Convergence of Business and Design; The Convergence of Design Industry Standards with The NCC Academics; The Convergence of Linear Thinking with Lateral Thinking; and, The Convergence of General Education Requirements with Everything. Each layer is designed to interact with today’s needs of a workforce skill which values convergence of knowledge to foster creative thinking and innovation. The NCC’s pedagogical construct converges career skill-based competencies with the holistic breadth of a liberal arts education while providing an epistemological methodology to converge disparate knowledge domains for creative thinking and innovation aptitudes. 

Purpose: In scholarly journal publication, blind peer review has become an integral part of the process that helps maintain the standard and quality of academic papers that are accepted for publication. The main purpose of this study was to understand the reasons for the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript by analysing the reviewers’ comments based on the ratings on eight specific areas of concern and their written comments.

Research method: The study was based on a content analysis of 248 reviewers’ comments for a total of 160 manuscripts. These papers were submitted to an academic journal between September 2017 and February 2018. 62 reviewers’ comments were analysed for 32 manuscripts that were accepted, and 186 reviewers’ comments were analysed for the 93 papers that were rejected. The reasons for desk rejections were analysed for the remaining 35 manuscripts.

Findings: The study has identified the most important reasons for acceptance based on their rating and these are: adequacy of literature review, research methodology/study design, structure of the paper, quality of the writing, quality of the problem formulation, discussions and conclusions, findings and quality of analysis, importance/relevance, title & abstract and research contribution to the body of knowledge. The main reasons for rejections are: poor discussion & conclusions section, substandard quality of writing, poorly structured paper, weak study design/methodological issues, lack of research gap, poorly developed literature review among others.

Conclusion: Structural problems are one of the most salient issues for the manuscript. While the context of the manuscripts is generally reasonably well developed, many authors seemed to overlook or ignore areas such as use of the English language, accurate punctuation, structure of the paper that includes poorly developed tables, figures and diagrams, inappropriate citation and list of references, unsuitable research instruments and poorly developed critical review of literature.

Originality/value- The study is original and contributes to the body of knowledge as it provides insight into reasons for acceptance and rejection of a manuscript based on the contentment analysis of 160 manuscripts. This will provide guidelines to the authors with valuable information on the ways in which they can develop their manuscripts with a view to increasing the likelihood of acceptance by a peer reviewed scholarly journal.