Integrating the Arts for Leadership Education and Development

The arts involve engaging the human imagination and sensory skills to communicate and create experiences, artifacts, and surroundings shared with others. Conventionally, education providers have compartmentalized the arts and sciences as separate and disparate disciplines. Yet, the future of work will continue to demand that organizations and their members remain agile, creative, and innovative in the face of ongoing uncertainty and change. As a result, leadership paradigms and models have been changing from top-down, command and control to relational, participative standards due to the need for collaborative expertise and organizational agility. This chapter will address the skills required for relational leaders and learning organizations, how higher education programs must model the way, and how integrating the arts within other disciplines could answer the call for deeper learning and collaborative engagement in the 21st century.

On the Use of Large Interactive Displays to Support Collaborative Engagement and Visual Exploratory Tasks

Large interactive displays can provide suitable workspaces for learners to conduct collaborative learning tasks with visual information in co-located settings. In this research, we explored the use of these displays to support collaborative engagement and exploratory tasks with visual representations. Our investigation looked at the effect of four factors (number of virtual workspaces within the display, number of displays, position arrangement of the collaborators, and collaborative modes of interaction) on learners’ knowledge acquisition, engagement level, and task performance. To this end, a user study was conducted with 72 participants divided into 6 groups using an interactive tool developed to support the collaborative exploration of 3D visual structures. The results of this study showed that learners with one shared workspace and one single display can achieve better user performance and engagement levels. In addition, the back-to-back position with learners sharing their view and control of the workspaces was the most favorable. It also led to improved learning outcomes and engagement levels during the collaboration process.

See What I Mean? Analogical Objects for Knowledge Mediation in Early Phases of Cross-Industry Innovation

The objective of this research is to explore the nature and role of analogies as objects for knowledge transfer in cross-industry collaborations. A case study of an organization seeking cross-industry innovation (CII) across two industry sectors was conducted, and the empirical data were analyzed qualitatively. We found that analogies used as knowledge mediation objects could be classified as explanatory or inventive, each expressed as linguistic or visual representations. Explanatory analogical objects help build prior knowledge of a foreign industry domain, thus easing later use of inventive analogical objects to identify how knowledge from one industry can be applied in another industry for innovation purposes. In these roles, the analogies serve as boundary objects. Both explanatory and inventive analogies can also serve as epistemic objects, motivating for further collaborative engagement. Visual representations of analogies help bridge the abstract with the concrete, thereby easing the process of creating analogies. They also enable nonverbal communication, thus helping bypass language barriers between knowledge domains. The reported research expands current research literature on knowledge mediation objects to the context of CII and provides added detailed understanding of the use of analogies in CII.

Addressing Students’ Unrest in South African Universities: The Need for a Facilitative Management Approach

ABSTRACT This study addresses the continuous occurrence of students’ unrest in South African universities due to the alleged pseudo-collaborative management styles of universities. Experiences, literature and observation, confirmed that student-oriented unrests are unabated, and that management of universities seem to struggle to ameliorate or find a lasting solution to these issues. This study is a theoretical analysis laced with facilitative management theory. The study is located within the transformation agenda by adopting a transformative paradigm to guide the study. The suggestible solutions, which include promotion of collaborative engagement, galvanisation of public opinions, the building of listening leaders and participatory management, were discussed as a dimension of a peaceful university system. The study also recommended full implementation of collaborative engagement, respect for the opinions of all stakeholders with a listening ear and ensuring that university culture is structured to accommodate equal participation of all stakeholders.

Using design thinking as an appr Using design thinking as an approach to creative and communicativ e and communicative engagement in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom

Design thinking (DT) could provide a viable method to develop 21st-century skills in English as Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms; however, its potential is not clearly understood. To explore this potential, two Japanese university teachers developed a DT course in which students built a creativity measure and wrote academic reflections. Student work displayed creative thinking, insight, and language play. Survey data revealed correlations between DT, student enjoyment, confidence communicating, and thinking flexibly. In conclusion, DT can facilitate collaborative engagement and creative thinking, however, time to develop on-task communication and a focused approach to report writing may be necessary to support understanding and communicative competence.

The Three Conditions: Solving Complex Problems through Self-Governing Agreements

Grounded in peacebuilding and negotiation literature, we propose a Three Conditions Model that promotes collaborative engagement and can help advance sustainable solutions to complex problems – domestic and international – through self-governing agreements based on the following three conditions: (1) inclusion of, (2) common understanding among, and (3) trust between all prime actors. Collectively, these conditions make the management of complex problems, and of the conflicts arising from them, more effective and sustainable. Using the coronavirus pandemic as an example, we briefly illustrate the nature of complex problems and self-governing agreements, address the inclusion-trust dilemma that mars many negotiations and assess the utility of each condition to address the coronavirus response in the United States more effectively.

Collaborative engagement experience-based learning: a teaching framework for business education

PurposeAn academic–practitioner divide exists suggesting the need for business education curriculum to more appropriately suit private-sector demands. This calls for pedagogical approaches that offer experiences and build skill sets to better prepare graduates for the workforce. The authors propose a framework, collaborative engagement experience-based learning (CEEBL), as a new pedagogical method for teaching and learning in business education. This research provides a viable solution to bridge the gap between academia and industry. The authors suggest CEEBL also offers business students new methods of engagement in the world of work.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory study investigates the CEEBL framework applied to a business education course in competitive intelligence (CI) and a crisis simulation exercise that offer “real world” experiences to students. Data were collected in two semesters and included feedback from over 70 undergraduate students.FindingsResults suggest that the CEEBL framework provides students with the learning experiences to build much-needed skill sets. Additionally, Hallinger and Lu's (2011) assessment of overall instructional effectiveness showed positive statistical results for its dimensions.Originality/valueThe CEEBL framework is coined from two existing pedagogical underpinnings; collaborative engagement (CE) and experience-based Learning (EBL). These concepts offer insights into the ways in which CE promotes a rich learning experience. The new framework takes into consideration the relationship(s) among the dimensions of CE and EBL and how they intertwine with each other to create a pedagogical method that can better prepare students for a dynamic workplace. CEEBL can be easily adapted for online, hybrid or in-session teaching environments. Additionally, the framework offers flexibility in application to other disciplines while addressing current topics and issues through the capstone exercise.

Comparing the Emergence of Technical and Social Sciences Research in Artificial Intelligence

Applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be examined from perspectives of different disciplines and research areas ranging from computer science and security, engineering, policymaking, and sociology. The technical scholarship of emerging technologies usually precedes the discussion of their societal implications but can benefit from social science insight in scientific development. Therefore, there is an urgent need for scientists and engineers developing AI algorithms and applications to actively engage with scholars in the social sciences. Without collaborative engagement, developers may encounter resistance to the approval and adoption of their technological advancements. This paper reviews a dataset, collected by Elsevier from the Scopus database, of papers on AI application published between 1997 and 2018, and examines how the co-development of technical and social science communities has grown throughout AI's earliest to latest stages of development. Thus far, more AI research exists that combines social science and technical explorations than AI scholarship of social sciences alone, and both categories are dwarfed by technical research. Moreover, we identify a relative absence of AI research related to its societal implications such as governance, ethics, or moral implications of the technology. The future of AI scholarship will benefit from both technical and social science examinations of the discipline's risk assessment, governance, and public engagement needs, to foster advances in AI that are sustainable, risk-informed, and societally beneficial.

Sink or Swim: Virtual Life Challenges among African American Families during COVID-19 Lockdown

This study explores African American parents’ experiences with using technology to engage their children in meaningful activities (e.g., e-learning) during COVID-19 and its impact on family health. Eleven African American families were recruited through a local health department program from a rural Midwestern community to participate in semi-structured interviews. Majority of participants reported stresses from feelings of “sink or swim” in a digital world, without supports from schools to effectively provide for their children’s technology needs. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of family-school collaborative engagement and empowerment. Digital technology needs to become part of our school education system so that technology use among African Americans is elevated and families protected against future outbreaks. Further research with a more diverse African American sample is needed.