The Course
For a number of years I have taught a popular Humphrey School of Public Affairs course called Strategic Planning and Management. The course examines the theory and practice of strategic planning and management for governments, public agencies, nonprofit organizations, collaborations, and, to a lesser extent, communities. The course mainly enrolls graduate students in professional degree programs such as public and nonprofit management, planning, social work, business, and public health, but doctoral students and advanced undergraduates also take the course.
A major purpose of the course is to improve students capabilities for strategic thinking, acting, and learning. Indeed, I argue that the main purpose of strategic planning is not to create a strategic plan, but to stimulate strategic thinking, acting, and learning on the part of individuals, groups, and organizations. Strategic plans can help, of course, but what really matters is the thinking, acting, and learning that go into formulating and implementing the plan (Bryson, 2011).
What is strategic thinking? I define it as thinking in context about how to pursue purposes or achieve goals. This also includes thinking about what the context is and how it might or should be changed; what the purposes are or should be; and what capabilities or competencies will or might be needed, and how they might be used, to achieve the purposes. Strategic acting is acting in context in light of future consequences to achieve purposes and/or to facilitate learning. Strategic learning is any change in a system (which can be a person) that adapts it better to its environment and produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity to pursue its purposes (Bryson, 2011, pp. 14 15).
The Challenges
The course has always been well-subscribed and well-received. Unfortunately, I was concerned about what I believed to be a number of shortcomings, including:
- Students not prepared to discuss the readings
- Students not prepared to discuss the strategic planning cases that are a key focal point for teaching about strategic thinking, acting, and learning
- Students not getting enough experience facilitating dialogue and discussion a key strategic planning skill around important topics
- Students not seeing enough parallels between their student team projects and a strategic planning process
- Me talking too much about strategic thinking, acting, and learning and not giving students enough experience with, and feedback on, their own engagements with these phenomena.
- Not making enough use of technology
An Office of Information Technology Faculty Fellowship helped me completely redesign the course so that it:
- More authentically replicates strategic planning and management in practice
- Gives students more actual experience with what it means to think, act, and learn strategically
- Makes better and more constructive use of educational technology
- Better integrates theory, scholarly research, and practice
Perhaps most important, the fellowship helped me understand my own goals for the students in this course. Basically, I wanted the students to become more expert than they were at strategic thinking, acting, and learning whatever their individual starting points (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, 2000, pp. 31 50.) This meant the course needed to create what Fink (2003, pp. 7) calls significant learning experiences in which students are deeply engaged in their learning in a high-energy way that results in significant and lasting change having a high potential for being of value in their lives after the course is over. The fellowship also helped reinforce the view that producing these significant learning experiences wasnt primarily about educational technology, but instead was about the design of the course in which technology would play a significant role. Technology had to be viewed as a support, not as the main focus.
The Response to the Challenges
Effectively addressing the challenges required a multi-pronged strategy. The newly designed course involves:
- Creating facilitated dialogue and deliberation forums (DDFs) as a part of many classes. Each DDF has approximately six students enough to provide a variety of opinions, stimulate a good dialogue, and give each student an opportunity to facilitate a conversation. Students are required to fill out online on the course Moodle site a one-page response to readings-related questions two days before a class in which a DDF will occur. Students assigned to be forum facilitators summarize, compare and contrast the readings in two pages and then either post their review online prior to class or else bring it to class. They then help facilitate a forum discussion of the issues. Students now come to class prepared to engage with the readings in a serious way. Peer pressure that develops within the groups enforces the norm that students should come to class prepared.
- Requiring students to prepare a one-page response to questions online about each case prior to our discussion of the case in class. As a result, students come to class prepared to engage in a deep and thoughtful discussion of the case at hand.
- Paying far more explicit attention to the parallels between a strategic planning efforts and the student team projects. Students are required to develop an initial contract to govern their work in much the same way as a strategic planning process would be set up. They are also required to reflect at several points along the way on how their team project process mirrors (or not) a strategic planning process.
- Providing more hands-on instruction in, and reflection on, the skills and tools of strategic planning and management. The class involves a number of small- and large-group activities that take up far more of the class time than they have in the past. The activities provide an experiential basis and data for reflecting on strategic thinking, acting, and learning including what they are, how they work, and how they might be made to work better for individuals, groups, and organizations. In one exercise groups develop strategy maps that link mission, goals, strategies and actions (Bryson, Ackermann, Eden, and Finn, 2004).
- Doing less lecturing and more coaching, filling in gaps, raising questions, and providing feedback. As a result of these changes, my role changed significantly. I now do far less lecturing and am far less the center of attention. The focus is now much more on the students own learning. I am now more an advisor and coach, helping students compare and contrast in-class and out-of-class experiences so that they can sharpen and qualify the lessons to be drawn from these experiences and consider how the lessons might be applied to new situations. Said differently, strategic thinking, acting, and learning are craft skills, the acquisition of which require more of a master-apprentice relationship than a traditional lecturer-student relationship (Scott, 1998; Sennett, 2009).
- Using Moodle, Basecamp, Refworks, PowerPoint, in-class Internet connections to important videos and websites, and email. Technology now plays a more prominent role in the class, but is clearly in a supporting role. Class communication and management are helped by a fully developed Moodle site. Lectures involve PowerPoint, as they always have, but in-class Internet connections to videos and websites are featured much more. Student teams make use of Basecamp (or another project management software, if they prefer) and Refworks (or Zotero, if they prefer) to manage their projects. Students also make use of a wide range of technologies in required student team presentations.
The Results
As noted, the course has always been well received, but the evaluations for Spring Semester 2011 the first semester the newly designed course was offered were outstanding. The results on a six-point scale (with six denoting the highest rating) were as follows (based on 33 of 35 possible respondents):
- The instructor was well-prepared for class Mean: 5.68, Median: 6.00
- The instructor presented the subject matter clearly Mean: 5.39, Median: 6.00
- The instructor provided feedback intended to improve my course performance Mean: 5.39, Median: 6.00
- The instructor treated me with respect Mean: 5.80, Median: 6.00
- I have a deeper understanding of the subject matter as a result of this course Mean: 5.55, Median: 6.00
- My interest in the subject matter was stimulated by this course Mean: 5.52, Median: 6.00
A study is being pursued during Spring Semester 2012 to determine more clearly what aspects of the course work best, what should be modified or dropped, and what changes occur in students cognitive skills related to strategic planning.
Conclusions
The main conclusion to be drawn is simply that the course redesign seemed to work, at least in terms of student course evaluations, which are higher than ever. The course redesign also seems to have worked in addressing the challenges that prompted it. However, fuller details and any qualifications regarding these conclusions will have to await completion of the study mentioned above.
In theoretical terms, the success of the redesign is rooted in the presumed benefits of experiential learning (Kolb, 1983; Fink, 2003). The learning cycle of experience reflection abstraction testing experience was used repeatedly throughout the course. It is hard to imagine craft knowledge being built by any other means.
Finally, an important feature of the course involved my coming to grips emotionally with the changes. I certainly understood cognitively why the redesign might be good for the students. What I had difficulty taking on board was that the redesign would have me doing less of something I actually like doing being the major focal point of the class and talking about something I really like talking about and instead moving more to the edge of the class much of the time. My role changed to being more a designer of learning occasions, a coach, and an advisor, and less of a front-and-center professor. In time, however, I came not only to accept the new roles, but to welcome them, since my students clearly were benefiting from a course in which their learning was front and center.
References
Bransford, John D., Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cockerling, Eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000.
John M. Bryson. Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 4th Edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011.
John M. Bryson, Fran Ackermann, Colin Eden, and Charles B. Finn, Visible Thinking: Unlocking Causal Mapping for Practical Business Results. Chichester, England: John Wiley, 2004.
Fink, D. Creating Significant Learning Experiences. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003.
Scott, James. Seeing Like A State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.