List of Suggestions/Ideas
from
Best Practices Workshop
Teaching and Learning
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In marketing the practice firm course to your school, have an open house where
current students make a presentation on the firm—and serve food—free pizza is
always good.
If your students are required to submit a portfolio of their work, have them
include proof of their purchases in the portfolio.
The IBPF is not a “market-drive economy.” It is activity driven. What really
happens is reciprocal “buying,” i.e., our employees will buy from you if your
employees buy from us. This idea is not actually verbalized—it just happens
from the activity. To sum this up, “to get more sales, you need to make more
purchases.”
Employee purchases are processed best through the Purchasing Department. This
way there is some “control” over what is happening. Also, if employees keep the
same alias names each semester, purchases made at the end, can be “transferred”
and paid for by the new employee.
Some products, i.e., travel, cars, motor cycles, etc. are too expensive for the
“employees” to buy. It was suggested that these types of products and services
come up with a “virtual” price—for example, a $3,000 trip to Italy could be
priced at $300—with a note that this is a virtual price (10 percent) of what the
actual trip would cost.
Have each department make two presentations during a semester on where the
department is and what they are doing. This increases the team’s communications
skill.
Rubrics are being used in many areas of assessment. CSBS will attempt to gather
some of these samples, and with the specific teacher’s permission, have them
available for sharing.
Have students work with a team of real business partners to learn “real world
business.” If a strong business partner does not exist, use a “board of directors”
or an advisory commission.
Video tape a presentation at the end of the semester/year to show to the next
group of students.
If your school allows the students to take the course again as something different,
the returning students can almost serve as the CEO or “teaching assistant.”
Another way to market the course for recruitment purposes is to send out a post
card to eligible students.
Some frustration with accurate firm database information was discussed. As this
is not under the control of CSBS, it was suggested that firms in the CSBS network
share contact information.
To encourage trading earlier, it was suggested to have a “trading day.” End of
October would probably be a good time. April/May is too late. Also suggested
was to have teachers/facilitators send in some orders to the CSBS firms just to get
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them started. The teacher could add themselves to their bank just like an
employee so they could pay for these few purchases. CSBS could deposit some
money into the teacher’s account.
Making use of more video conferencing was suggested. CSBS will gather
information from each school about their equipment, and then share that
information with everyone.
To encourage making contacts, assign each student a specific country and have
them send out an email to each firm on the list.
If your course utilizes “department head” or “department coordinators,” have a
“training day” to get them started.
Pay for employees is usually done on an hourly basis and most firms pay overtime
for the “employees” who put in extra time.
CSBS will look into some type of technology for the website to allow students to
discuss what is going on in their respective firms—something like a chat room.
The suggestion was made to have a more experienced firm mentor a brand new
firm. This would serve as a good source of support for both teachers and
students. This will be strongly considered. Have a meet/greet in the fall with the
mentor firm via video conference.