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 Activities Business collaboration: Academic discussion of issues

Business collaboration: Academic discussion of issues

Brief description

In this exercise, the students must be divided into reflective teams where they discuss issues from specific business projects. They must take turns to interview each other and open up new reflections and perspectives on the issue in question.

Motivation for the exercise and required outcome

The purpose of the exercise is that the students practice their competences by asking open and analysing questions relating to their own subject field. By doing so, they may obtain further insight into the issues they encounter in their business collaboration. The exercise sharpens the students’ focus as regards their choice of relevant issues and their ability to argue in favour of their academic perspectives.

Performing the exercise

    • You as a teacher must divide the students into groups. The group members must choose one focus person and one interviewer from within the group. The remaining group members constitute the reflective team.
      • The focus person briefly explains an issue or problem or other aspect which they have worked on in connection with a business project, the completion of a specific assignment, and exam etc. (five minutes).
      • The role of the interviewer is to get the focus person to open up more and reflect on their responses and inferences. The interviewer must therefore regularly ask questions regarding the focus person’s issues. The interviewer may find inspiration for questions in handout 1, but it is important that the interviewer is not limited by these questions and does not include their own attitudes, advice or solutions in the interview.
      • The reflective team (the remaining group members) remain silent during the interview. They keep an eye on the reflection points in handout 2 and jot down any main points from the interview.
    • Once the interviewer has finished interviewing the focus person, the reflective team explain what they noticed on the basis of the focus points and possibly ask clarifying questions to the focus person (five minutes).
    • Then the students swap roles internally in the group. They continue until all group members have tried all roles.

    Options:

    • During their business collaboration, the students may keep a reflection log in which they can write down issues to bring to a supervision session or use for a group exercise focusing on interdisciplinary perspectives in which the students discuss the issues from different angles.
    • The exercise can be defined for various types of problem solution; in relation to business collaboration, group work, an assignment set by the teacher or for an exam.

    Activities

      Examples of practice

        You will need:

        • Download the attached handouts here:
        Revised 24.11.2023
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        AU Educate