Excitement and anxiety in the first-year experiential classroom
Trevor Tyson and Letchumy Taylor
School of Business, Swinburne University of Technology
HBH 110 ‘Organisations and Management’, a compulsory first-year subject in Swinburne’s
Bachelor of Business degree, is taught experientially to large classes of 80. The subject presents a
unique experience of active and collaborative learning for students who, for the most part, arrive
expecting a conventional lecture-tutorial program. While some students use their capacities and
self-confidence to grasp and benefit from the unique opportunities available in this innovative
program, others are all but immobilised by anxiety. In the latter situation, staff are challenged to
act as ‘containers of anxiety’ so that learning is not blocked. The authors’ research into
excitement and anxiety as bipolar emotional responses to student disorientation and uncertainty
led them to the conclusion that the mere containment of anxiety is a limited strategy. An
hypothesis is put forward that the negative energies of anxiety can be transformed by harnessing
the positive energies of excitement.
It is no longer realistic to define the purpose of learning and education as merely to transmit
what is known, for we have entered a world that is rapidly changing. To develop a higher
level of learning in tertiary educational institutions, it is thought that the traditional objectives
of the knowledge and comprehension approach implied in the conventional teaching methods
are not the best way of acquiring new learning skills (Cook, 1991; Statton et al., 1996). The
traditional method of teaching is seen to promote a ‘surface approach’ to learning, which is
thought to lead to inadequate educational outcomes (Stein et al., 1996; Statton et al., 1996). In
fact, universities appear to be moving away from what Tyson (1996, 476) called the ‘culture
of passive and dependent learning in a didactic knowledge-focused hierarchical classroom’
towards encouraging students to gain a voice in the construction of knowledge, and the
enhancement of their involvement in the process of learning (Franklin and Peat, 1996; James
and Johnson, 1996).
Nontraditional approaches which have a focus on learning that increases the individual’s selfawareness and capacity for self-monitoring and reflection while engaged in educational
activity (Boud et al., 1985; Tough 1990) are clearly evident in the themes of the Pacific Rim
Conferences on the First Year in Higher Education. An overview of the conference papers
reveals that many universities in Australia are now emphasising collaborative and experiential
learning methods (see, for example, Franklin & Peat, 1996; James & Johnson, 1996; Tyson,
1996). One such program is described below, together with some thoughts arising from
research data on students’ emotional responses to the teaching/learning model, and the
implications for managing anxiety in large experiential classes.
HBH 110 ‘Organisations and Management’
The School of Business at Swinburne University of Technology offers a Bachelor of Business
degree with a choice of majors in disciplines such as Accounting, Marketing, and Human
Resource Management. All students in their first year are required to take the core subject
‘Organisations and Management’ (O&M). Until 1993, this one-semester subject was taught
in the traditional lecture/tutorial format, but it was re-designed in that year to be taught
experientially to very large intakes of up to 400 students using the ‘Classroom-asOrganisation’ (CAO) model (Cohen, 1976; Clare, 1976; Obert, 1982; Pendse, 1985; Putzel,
1992; Tyson, 1996, 1999). In this approach, staff and students operate as a real organisation,
teaching and learning the management of tasks, people, and group/intergroup relationships by
applying and then reflecting upon the concepts and skills being studied in the curriculum
itself. Learning is achieved by (a) having to deal with process and content issues in the
organisational life of the classroom, and (b) by discovering that these issues have clear
parallels in organisations of all kinds out there in the so-called ‘real world’.
To support the major strategic aim of developing students as proactive autonomous learners,
the original CAO model was adapted by drawing on valued principles from four longestablished and complementary traditions in tertiary education and research: experiential
learning (Kolb, 1984; Weil & McGill, 1989; Boud et al., 1993); self-directed learning
(Rogers, 1969; Knowles, 1975; Boud, 1981; Brookfield, 1985); adult learning (Brundage &
MacKeracher, 1980; Cross, 1981; Brookfield, 1986; Knowles, 1990); and collaborative
learning, (Goodsell et al., 1992; Bruffee, 1993; Cohen, 1994; Thorley & Gregory, 1994).
Recently, staff have been applying their own learning about the ‘Tavistock tradition’ of Group
Relations Conferences1 (Rice, 1965; Gustafson & Cooper, 1978; Rioch, 1985; Miller, 1990)
to transforming their management role in the O&M classroom organisation from facilitator to
consultant, in a style closely resembling the socio-analytic consulting process elucidated by
Bain (1997)2.
Strategy, structure and culture in O&M
Each weekly session runs for three hours. For the first hour, a class of eighty meets together
with two members of the teaching staff in a large lecture theatre for a ‘Divisional Meeting’.
In the second and third hour of each session, the class operates in four Work Groups of twenty
which meet in separate rooms as self-managing teams to work on the set assignments in any
way they choose. The three assignments consist of a small-group project, a large-group
project, and an individual examination. The core curriculum for this subject comprises four
concepts: organisational strategy, structure, culture and external environment. (For a fuller
description of the subject design and delivery see Tyson (1996 and 1999) or write to the
authors for a subject outline). Throughout the sessions, we (the staff) act as learning
consultants. In the large group meeting we make process observations, offer interpretations
about the behaviour of the group as a whole, suggest resources, and challenge the students to
be self-reflecting and self-critical, particularly about negative, resistant or blaming behaviours.
We guide the emerging classroom culture towards trust, respect for difference, active
listening, sharing of knowledge, resources and experience, and collaboration within groups
1
The Tavistock Institute in London is one of a number of institutions world-wide which run residential
conferences for the experiential study of individual, group and organisational behaviour. The insights of
psychoanalytic theory generally underpin the ‘Tavistock approach’, whether this is applied to education, training,
action research or consulting.
2
Bain describes the socio-analytic consultant as one who, inter alia, works with unconscious and nonrational
processes as well as the conscious and rational, and who assumes that organisations have socially-constructed
defences against anxiety which have to be worked with before learning can occur.
2
and across subgroup boundaries. Our aim is to place the responsibility for learning onto the
students by encouraging them to take over the agenda for the hour. This requires them to
become increasingly adventurous, creative and self-resourcing in planning the later sessions
and negotiating across Work Group boundaries to decide on learning strategies and structures.
These meetings are frequently characterised by high levels of anxiety, and sometimes of
excitement on the part of at least a few students who manage to ‘rise to the occasion’.
In the second and third hours, each Work Group is immediately confronted with the need to
start organising and managing themselves as an effective group. As they struggle to make
sense of the unfamiliar, the mood and level of activity in each room varies markedly: it is not
unusual to see one group seated in rows, dispersed and silent, a group next door with their
chairs drawn into a close circle and chatting animatedly, and a third spilling out into the
corridor in search of refreshments or heading for the library to get some information (or
salvation!). In our capacity as learning consultants to the Work Groups we try to avoid being
‘hooked’ into becoming surrogate tutors, and constantly strive to assist the students to draw on
their own innate abilities and resourcefulness to overcome problems in coming to grips with
unfamiliar content as well as sometimes quite difficult group dynamics. As the weeks go by,
each Work Group develops a distinctive structure and culture, and finds learning strategies
that best fit their diverse range of learning styles and motivation levels.
Excitement and anxiety in O&M
Anxiety is always a given at the ‘learning edge’: that familiar threshold where one teeters
between knowing and not-knowing (French & Simpson, 1999). Experiential and
collaborative learning methods tend to exacerbate that anxiety, sometimes to the degree
claimed by Raab (1997) when she refers to ‘the terrible anxiety experienced by both clients
and consultant (students and lecturer) when forced to stay in the present and face their
unknowingness’ (161). Bion (1961) goes even further and claims that in groups there is ‘a
hatred of having to learn by experience at all’ (89). Certainly, the larger the group, the higher
the potential for threats to identity and survival (Turquet, 1975), so it is not surprising that the
Divisional Meetings are the most difficult to manage. Our own anxiety (and occasional
excitement) are in there too, challenging us to ‘hold’ – or be adequate ‘containers’ for – the
students’ anxiety as well as coping with our own.
Over the last few years, we have become increasingly concerned that although a majority of
students like the subject (according to data from subject evaluations), and many display high
levels of active and enthusiastic involvement, there is still a significant number experiencing
anxiety, sometimes over the whole course of the semester. This anxiety can be particularly
acute in the case of international students. Mostly from Pacific Rim countries, these students
typically have had a traditional teacher-centred education. The shock of coming to terms with
lecturers who do not lecture, coping with the absence of tutors, and confronting a complex set
of self-managing tasks is quite stressful, and in many cases adds to other disorientations
associated with studying in a foreign country: homesickness, housing problems, ‘fitting in’
socially. Unaccustomed to the ‘staff-as-learning-consultant’ role, and bereft of familiar
teaching strategies, these and many local students perceive an ‘authority vacuum’, and feel as
if they have been ‘thrown in the deep end’ – an apt metaphor for the O&M experience which
was colourfully described by Ballantyne et al. (1997, 75-88) through the eyes of the subject
Convenor.
3
As a result of challenges to our role in the large-group Divisional Meetings in particular, we
have been led inexorably to agree with French (1997) and Raab (1997) that the prime function
of the teacher of a large experiential class is to manage anxiety – their own as well as their
students’! We have been strongly influenced by the psychodynamic literature on anxiety and
its management in organisational contexts (for example, Turquet, 1975; SalzbergerWittenberg et al., 1983; Lyth, 1990; Lawrence, 1995). Concern that our swing from
facilitation towards consulting might have contributed to the higher-than-usual levels of
student anxiety observed in first semester 1998, we found ourselves struggling more and more
with the ‘container of anxiety’ role. The seminal works by Klein (1946, 1959) and
Salzberger-Wittenberg et al. (1983) helped us to recognise that the psychodynamic roots of
anxiety lay in infancy and subsequent relations with peers and teachers in educational settings.
In the light of this, we acknowledged that it was beyond our powers, and certainly beyond our
mandate, to deal therapeutically with anxiety so deep-rooted, and we looked for other
solutions.
Research into student emotional responses
Since 1993, when O&M first ran in the experiential format, subject evaluations indicated that
a majority of students (typically around 70-75%) had a positive response to the subject.
However, the open-ended questions consistently revealed an unacceptably high proportion
registering negative attitudes or dwelling on unpleasant incidents. In 1998 we initiated two
research projects aimed at eliciting feedback that would better inform our interventions and at
the same time contribute hard data for improving the curriculum and its delivery. Harding &
Kidd (1999) investigated the particular needs of international students doing O&M, and
Taylor (1998) interviewed in depth a sample of students who had recorded extremely positive
or extremely negative experiences of O&M in a preliminary quantitative survey.
Specific findings of Taylor’s research have had a significant influence on the development of
our role over the past year. The study sample was 237 out of a target population of 340
students enrolled in first semester 1998. The quantitative phase focussed on the students’
emotional response to the subject overall, and revealed the following frequency distribution:
REACTION
FREQUENCY
PERCENT
Loved it
Liked it
Disliked it
Hated it
Total
21
136
68
12
237
8.85
57.40
28.70
5.05
100
This distribution is about average when compared with quantitative data drawn from the
preceding two years of subject evaluations. Apart from giving a general picture of reactions to
the subject, the responses provided the basis for the qualitative phase of the survey, the
selection of ten interviewees for one-hour in-depth interviews to be conducted in the narrative
style (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995; Miller & Glassner, 1997; Mishler, 1986). Five interviewees
were selected from the 21 who ‘loved it’, and five from the 12 who ‘hated it’. The transcripts
4
(selections from which are included in Appendices 1 and 2 at the end of this paper) led us to
infer parallels between mental state as revealed in the recalled experiences and mental state
underlying behaviour observed in the O&M meetings. We then hypothesised correlations
between ‘love it’ and excited behaviour on the one hand, and ‘hate it’ and anxious behaviour
on the other. Recalling Maslow’s famous dictum ‘to dichotomise is to pathologise’ led us at
this point to reconsider excitement and anxiety not as ‘either/or’ polar extremes of student
behaviour but rather as ‘both/and’ outcomes of aroused emotional energies, and as such
potentially capable of being reversed (as in the sense of those ambiguous figures such as the
Necker cube or the well-known old woman/young woman pictures to be found in any chapter
on perception in a psychology textbook).
The potential of Reversal Theory
Following this line of reasoning led us first to explore Optimal Arousal Theory (Hebb, 1955;
Duffy, 1957) to explain the nature of arousal in O&M, but we immediately discovered the
more recent and more convincing Reversal Theory (Apter, 1982, 1989; Kerr et al., 1993) and
its treatment of excitement-seeking and anxiety-avoidance as metamotivational modes.
Which mode a person adopts at any point in time depends on the combination of personal and
situational factors. Persons driven by a goal-oriented motivational mode move from a state of
relaxation to towards anxiety as arousal of unpleasant feelings increases; persons driven by
enjoyment of an activity for its own sake move from boredom to excitement as arousal of
pleasant feelings increases. In the frustration and disorientation that often reigns in O&M
meetings, achievement-driven students who begin to fear failure get ‘uptight’ and anxious,
while activity-enjoying students, relieved at not being bored, get ‘upfront’ and excited. Put
another way, the former suppress their fearful emotions in response to perceived threats, the
latter express their joyful emotions in response to perceived challenges. Reversal Theory also
proposes that reversals can occur, particularly at moderate to high levels of arousal, between
excitement and anxiety or back again as a result of the shifting interplays between internal
mental state and external situational factors.
Even at our early and superficial level of engagement with Reversal Theory there seems to be
a potential for reward in taking a fresh look at the O&M model from this new (to us)
perspective. We are already raising some challenging questions: could a reversal from anxiety
to excitement be induced in a student or a group by an appropriate intervention on the part of a
learning consultant? Might not the excitement of students who love O&M be somehow
harnessed and put at the service of those who are anxious and hate it? Would interventions
such as these be more effective in creating a ‘sphere of safety’ (Long & Newton, 1997, 295) or
a learning-friendly ‘holding environment’ (Winnicott, 1965)? A wider question is: can
Reversal Theory be a tool for resolving the excitement/anxiety dichotomy we have currently
established, perhaps unwisely, in O&M? Our own excitement at the prospect of approaching
this ‘learning edge’ is tempered by the anxiety of not-knowing – Reversal Theory is daunting
in its newness and complexity, yet the excitement of a leap forward in the development of our
role is at the same time compellingly attractive. Surely our own experience of
avoidance/attraction has a parallel in the student experience of learning in O&M? If it does,
then as learners we may have found a key to being more effective teachers.
References
5
Apter, M. J. (1982). The experience of motivation: The theory of psychological reversals.
London: Academic Press.
Apter, M. J. (1989). Reversal theory. London: Routledge.
Bain, A. (1997). The role of organisational consultant as socio-analyst. AISA Working
Paper No. 4, Carlton South, Victoria: Australian Institute of Socio-Analysis.
Ballantyne, R., Bain, J. and Packer, J. (1997). Reflecting on university teaching:
Academics’ stories. Committee for University teaching and Staff Development,
Commonwealth of Australia Department of Employment, Education, Training and
Youth Affairs, Australian Government Publishing Service.
Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in groups. London: Tavistock Publications.
Boud, D. (Ed.) (1981). Developing student autonomy in learning. London: Kogan Page.
Boud, D., Keogh, R. and Walker, D. (1985). Reflection: Turning experience into learning.
London: Kogan Page.
Boud, D., Cohen, R. and Walker, D. (Eds.) (1993). Using experience for learning.
Buckingham: The Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University
Press.
Brookfield, S. (Ed.) (1985). Self-directed learning: From theory to practice. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Brookfield, S. (Ed.) (1986). Understanding and facilitating adult learning. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Bruffee, K. A. (1993). Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the
authority of knowledge. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Brundage, D. H. and MacKeracher, D. (1980). Adult learning principles and their application
to program planning. Ontario: Ministry of Education.
Clare, D. A. (1976). Organizational Behavior, Inc.: Variation on a theme. The Teaching of
Organizational Behavior, 2:3, 15-20.
Cohen, A. R. (1976). Beyond simulation: Treating the classroom as an organization. The
Teaching of Organizational Behavior, 2:1, 13-19.
Cohen, E. G. (1994). Restructuring the classroom: Conditions for productive small groups.
Review of Educational Research 64:1, 1-35.
Cook, L. (1991). Cooperative Learning: A Successful College Teaching Strategy. Innovative
Higher Education Journal 16:1, 27-37.
Cross, P. (1981). Adults as learners. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Duffy, E. (1957). The psychological significance of the concept of ‘arousal’ or ‘activation’.
Psychological Review 64, 265-75.
Franklin, S. and Peat, M. (1996). Mechanisms for facilitating group learning in first year
biology: Assisting the transition. In James & McInnis, 233-42.
French, R. (1997). The teacher as container of anxiety: Psychoanalysis and the role of
teacher. Journal of Management Education, 21:4, 483-95.
French, R. and Simpson, P. (1999). Our Best Work happens when we don’t know what we’re
doing. Socio-Analysis 1:2, 216-30.
Goodsell, A. S., Maher, M. R., Tinto, V, Smith, B. L. and MacGregor, J. (1992).
Collaborative learning: A sourcebook for higher education. University Park, PA:
National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment.
Gustafson, J. P. and Cooper, L. (1978). Towards the study of society in microcosm:
Critical problems of group relations conferences. Human Relations 31:10, 843-62.
Harding, W. and Kidd, B. (1999). Difference, identity and performance: developing
effective strategies to improve the learning performance of international students.
6
Hawthorn, VIC: Office for Quality Education, Swinburne University of Technology.
Hebb, D. O. (1955). Drives and the C.N.S. (Conceptual Nervous System). Psychological
Review, 62, 243-54.
Holstein, J. and Gubrium, J. F. (1995). The active interview. New York: Sage Publications.
James, R. and Johnston, C. (1996). Enhancing first year tutorials: A collaborative, problemoriented approach to learning economics. In James & McInnis, 253-65.
James, R. and McInnis, C. (Eds.) (1996). Transition to active learning: Proceedings of the
2nd Pacific Rim Conference on the First Year in Higher Education. Melbourne: The
Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne.
Kerr, J. H., Murgatroyd, S. and Apter, M. J. (Eds.) (1993). Advances in Reversal Theory.
Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger.
Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. International Journal of PsychoAnalysis 27, 99-110.
Klein, M. (1959). Our adult world and its roots in infancy. Human Relations 12, 291-303.
Knowles, M. S. (1975). Self-directed learning: A guide for learners and teachers. New York:
Cambridge Books.
Knowles, M. S. (1990). The adult learner: A neglected species. 4th edn., Houston: TX:
Gulf Publishing Co.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and
development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Lawrence, W. G. (1995). The presence of totalitarian states-of-mind in institutions. Paper
read at the inaugural Conference on Group Relations of the Institute of Human
Relations, Sofia, Bulgaria. Online at www.human-nature.com/hraj/lawren.html
Long, S. and Newton, J. (1997). Educating the gut: socio-emotional aspects of the learning
organization. The Journal of Management Development 16:4, 284-301.
Lyth, I. M. (1990). Social systems as a defense against anxiety. In E. L. Trist and H. Murray
(Eds.) The social engagement of social science, Vol. 1: The socio-psychological
perspective. London: Free Association Books, 439-62.
Miller, E. J. (1990). Experiential learning in groups 1. In E. L. Trist and H. Murray (Eds.)
The social engagement of social science, Vol. 1: The socio-psychological perspective.
London: Free Association Books, 165-85.
Miller, J. and Glassner, B. (1997). The inside and the outside: Finding realities in interviews.
In D. Silverman (Ed.) Qualitative research: Theory, method and practice. London:
Sage Publications.
Mishler, E. G. (1986). Research interviewing: Context and narrative. Harvard University
Press.
Obert, S. L. (1982). Teaching micro O.D. skills by developing the classroom organization.
Exchange - the Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 7:1, 23-26.
Pendse, S. (1985). E pluribus unum: Making a classroom an organization. Organizational
Behavior Teaching Review 9:4, 41-51.
Putzel, R. (1992). ‘Experience base’ learning: A classroom-as-organization using
delegated, rank-order grading. Journal of Management Education 16:2, 204-219.
Raab, N. (1997). Becoming an expert in not knowing – reframing teacher as consultant.
Management Learning 28:2, 161-75.
Rice, A. K. (1965). Learning for leadership. London: Tavistock Publications.
Rioch, M. J. (1985). Why I work as a consultant in the conferences of the A. K. Rice Institute.
In A. D. Colman and M. H. Geller (Eds.) Group relations reader 2. Washington DC:
7
A. K. Rice Institute, 365-81.
Rogers, C. R. (1969). Freedom to learn. Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Salzberger-Wittenberg, I., Henry, G. and Osborne, E. (1983). The emotional experience of
learning and teaching. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Statton, P., McBride, G. and Sharp, R. (1996). Active learning through collaborative learning
in class (CLIC): A case study in first year economics. In James & McInnis, 423-36.
Stein, A., Craig, A. and Scollory, A. (1996). In transition - The profile of commencing
business faculty students for 1995. In James & McInnis, 437-46.
Taylor, L. V. (1998). Students reaction to self-managed learning. Bachelor of Business
Honours thesis, Hawthorn, Victoria: Swinburne University of Technology.
Thorley, L. and Gregory, R. (Eds.) (1994). Using group-based learning in higher education.
London: Kogan Page.
Tough, A. (1990). Encouraging self-planned learning. In R. M. Smith and Associates (Eds.)
Learning to learn across the life span. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Turquet, P. (1975). Threats to identity in the large group. In L. Kreeger (Ed.) The large group:
Dynamics and therapy. London: Constable, 87-144.
Tyson, T. (1999). CALO – the class as a learning organisation: The CAO model revisited and
revitalised. Hawthorn: Swinburne University of Technology, School of Business
HRM/OB Working Paper Series.
Tyson, T. (1996). Active learning in a management school – A radical approach. In James and
McInnis, 479-94.
Weil, S. W. and McGill, I. (Eds.) (1989). Making sense of experiential learning:
Diversity in theory and practice. Milton Keynes: Society for Research into Higher
Education and Open University Press.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The maturational process and the facilitating environment. New
York: International Universities Press.
Appendix 1 - Students who loved O&M
Fred loved O&M because ‘the lecturers took a back seat, and it gave the students more of an
opportunity to contribute. Rather than impress the lecturers by reiterating something out of a
book, the students had to express the concepts to the class in their own words. I guess the
main thing I learned is that there's always a different way of looking at a point or concept.
Even though I may think my way is the best, O&M showed me that there's always a different
way of looking at things and a different way of doing it and that's one of the main reasons that
I enjoyed the subject. The learning for me was in reconciling all the different points of view
into one multi-faceted thing and working with it. O&M definitely increased my self-esteem
and confidence. I'm usually a quiet person and a shy person. I get nervous when I get up and
talk to people in front of a crowd of eighty, but I actually surprised myself when I started
going up in front of everybody, saying this is the way I think it should be and arguing a point’.
Adam said: ‘For me this whole subject is about learning about yourself. Like how you cope
with yourself. How you deal with stress. How you deal with finding new friends and working
in a group. You have to make the effort to work with others, you can't work by yourself
individually. When it comes to contribution you need to let people say what they want. If you
attack them or say that they're wrong, they'll never say anything again. You might think that
they're being lazy but they've actually been offended. So you have to learn to get along with
other people. Every person is different and you have to learn how much criticism they can
8
take. I wanted to stand up and say to this or that person hurry up or just do it. But then I
realised that it’s really unfair if I criticise this person and most probably they would not say
anything again. I realised I have to let everyone have their own time. I learned to be patient’.
Elizabeth: ‘I became more familiar with the way I naturally try to lead people or take
direction. I am a very people and communication based person. It gave me a lot of confidence
and I also learnt to compromise at times. It made me step back more and listen to other
people. I never would have learned how important good communication and relationships
with other people are. I think our group really worked to overcome the divide between
overseas and local students. I believe that the overseas students felt really lost in the beginning
and that was something that we as a group really had to work through.
Cathy: ‘O&M is a subject where you can get as much out of it as you want to get out of it. It
mostly taught me a lot about people and I got first-hand experience about dealing with people,
working in a big group. Probably the best that I got out of the subject was I learnt a lot about
group work and why people behave the way that they do, the types of roles people play in
groups and how some managers can get it all to happen. I loved it because I got the
opportunity to learn a lot more about people. I think it’s really an amazing subject, the way
they structured it, you really did learn a hell of a lot more than you realised. I think you'd still
be learning from now on. It's the only subject I've done, apart from Marketing, that I've
actually done a lot of additional reading by choice!’ This is what Fred gained overall from the
O&M subject: ‘I work a lot better in groups now. I built on my experience from O&M with
the OB subject at the moment. I say to my group we could do it better like this because I
learned in O&M about what you are suggesting and it does not work that effectively’. For
Cathy, ‘the most I really got out of this subject was understanding other people. I deal with
angry people going psycho all day so it made me realise that people, as a general rule of
thumb, are really going to come down to some extremely similar situation to what I just
experienced. So knowing that, you can apply your experience to a wide range of other things. I
think too, to a certain degree, it helped me realise what was going on at work. By actually
doing the readings and being in the situation, seeing the similarities between the groups, made
me realise the problem at work’. For Adam, O&M is also about letting go of fear and learning
to persevere: ‘The first couple of weeks I was scared that I might fail the subject and I almost
dropped out. It seemed just too hard to keep up but I changed my mind and thought: “I can't
quit now, I've only just started”. I realised that you had to be determined to get anywhere in
that class. If you were going to say “No, don't worry about it, I don't want to do it, or I can't be
bothered” you are stuffed. In this subject you're on your own and you’ve got to get in your
own mind that you work for yourself’.
Being personally challenged was important. Adam said: ‘The first couple of weeks
were like climbing a mountain and there was nothing to hold on. I wanted to give in but then I
realised I didn't come to university for nothing and if this is how they [the teachers] are going
to teach, I can't get around it. If I quit now I would classify myself as a quitter. I knew it would
get better if I kept at it and kept attending every class. You need a self-motivation: no-one else
is going to care if you quit or not, you got to make it yourself. That's a big thing’. For Fred:
‘What I enjoyed about it was just working through all the frustration and that was
challenging’. Louisa said ‘O&M challenged me because I come from a background where I
was very safe and secure - this subject exposed me to a very significant experience…it was
self-learning. I was venturing into unknown territory and I learnt my own strength.
Appendix 2: Students who hated O&M
9
The main factor that played a part in the students’ extreme dislike of the subject was fear of
failing the subject. This is what Ben revealed in his interview: ‘I have experienced a lot in this
subject - some of it was good, but the fear of failing was a heavy burden. Because you don’t
have anything to measure our performance, or where you’re going or how you’re doing, there
is no feedback. I was also scared about the end of semester exam because I didn’t understand
what was happening in the divisional meeting’. Similarly for Jodie: ‘All through the semester
I was scared that I would fail the subject. Until I got the result I was scared because I was not
sure if the answer was correct’. Daniel hated the Divisional Meetings: ‘It was a very hostile
and abusive environment and the students got jumped on. With what was left of the group, a
lot of them were just too scared to say anything in the divisional meeting. One chap in
particular, in our group just said, “I'm not showing up to the divisional meeting because say a
wrong word in there and you'll get yourself killed” and he didn't say a word for thirteen weeks.
They [the students] were behaving this way because that is how they were conditioned to
behave in that room, because there's no other way to behave. They didn't know what they were
achieving or what they were supposed to achieve. They had nothing to guide them and of
course, the frustration sets in and all you need is one wrong word. There was this one girl she
was forever apologising. She'd say something like, “I would like to say, but I don't mean to
offend you”. And then she'd say, “But, I don't mean to offend you”, that's the stage she got to every second word. For Katherine too: ‘Because the subject was very ambiguous, and was
unclear in structure the students got frustrated and didn’t care who they hurt in the process.
The level of anger and excess baggage they brought into this class was amazing and it made
most of us terrified to say anything critical’.
This is what Jodie had to say about her interaction with other students in the divisional
meeting: ‘In our group, we have so many overseas students and they didn’t say anything
during the lecture because they are so scared to speak up. My English is not good and the local
students speak very fast and their conversation sometimes we cannot understand. The local
students always pick up on us by saying “why the overseas student don’t share anything, or
what is it - they don’t understand?” and we get really scared to say anything.’ William spoke
about students’ interaction and self-presentation: ‘You have the outspoken people and it's like,
they are the chosen ones and nobody's allowed to say anything else. You start talking, and they
talk over you, it's very condescending. They took over the whole show. So, I stopped
participating. Even though these people suggest that other people’s views were as valid, they
don’t let you get a word in edgeways. They just argue or put in their own little angry way’. For
Katherine too: ‘There were some really dominating personalities - once their leadership was
accepted, it was very hard to break that mould. It continued that way all semester. Some
people in the big group were so quiet, that they never ever, ever spoke and it wasn't even
looked at. There were so many times I wanted say something, to participate but I suppressed
myself from saying anything because I don’t want to rock the boat. It was like the blind
leading the blind. That was the problem.
10