Personal Application Assignment
THE PERSONAL APPLICATION ASSIGNMENT (PAA)
A variety of texts and articles over the past few years have argued for the use of an alternative approach to teaching organizational behavior, one that emphasizes experiential learning. This approach "emphasizes an existential, emergent view for learning organizational behavior" (McMullen, 1979), where the role of the instructor is that of learning facilitator, responsible for designing experiences for students to base learning upon, rather than as teacher, responsible for lecturing on theory and concepts. While gaining wide acceptance, this approach has nevertheless created problems in the assessment of students' performance. Significant learnings in this model of teaching occur not only from the development of concepts, but also from the experiences themselves. McMullen (as well as others) has proposed the use of a personal application assignment to help solve the problem of performance assessment. This assignment is based upon the experiential learning model formulated by Kolb (1971). This model is discussed in more detail in the text chapter on learning styles. Kolb's model argues that learning occurs through a process which might begin with a concrete experience, which leads to reflective observation about the experience. Abstract conceptualization follows in which models, paradigms, strategies, and metaphors are applied to the results of the experience. Active experimentation concludes the cycle as the concepts are then put into practice, thus generating new concrete experience. Figure 1 shows the model more clearly.
Figure 1: Experiential Learning Model (Kolb)
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| | | |Concrete experiences | | | |
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A variety of texts and articles over the past few years have argued for the use of an alternative approach to teaching organizational behavior, one that emphasizes experiential learning. This approach "emphasizes an existential, emergent view for learning organizational behavior" (McMullen, 1979), where the role of the instructor is that of learning facilitator, responsible for designing experiences for students to base learning upon, rather than as teacher, responsible for lecturing on theory and concepts. While gaining wide acceptance, this approach has nevertheless created problems in the assessment of students' performance. Significant learnings in this model of teaching occur not only from the development of concepts, but also from the experiences themselves. McMullen (as well as others) has proposed the use of a personal application assignment to help solve the problem of performance assessment. This assignment is based upon the experiential learning model formulated by Kolb (1971). This model is discussed in more detail in the text chapter on learning styles. Kolb's model argues that learning occurs through a process which might begin with a concrete experience, which leads to reflective observation about the experience. Abstract conceptualization follows in which models, paradigms, strategies, and metaphors are applied to the results of the experience. Active experimentation concludes the cycle as the concepts are then put into practice, thus generating new concrete experience. Figure 1 shows the model more clearly.
Figure 1: Experiential Learning Model (Kolb)
| | | | | | | | |
| | | |Concrete experiences | | | |
| | |