Learning Styles and Learning Spaces - Research Proposal Example

Executive Summary This report summarises our learning experiences from our team work in the MEGA business simulation held from October to December 2013. Our goal was to increase the sales revenue and the EBIT of our cars belonging to four segments, low-cost, family, eco-friendly and image, by framing and executing suitable competitive strategies. During the course of the project, we came across some critical incidents that served as a source of learning for the team. These critical incidents, related to team formation, strategy concepts and reflective techniques, gave us ample scope to bridge the gaps between theory and practice by engaging in experiential learning process. Introduction "Reflection is an important human activity in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it. It is this working with experience that is important in learning." (Boud et al, 2013, p. 19) This principle has, in recent years, been termed as reflective practice technique and has been widely accepted across the world as a developmental tool for individuals, groups and organisations. Also it has been recognised as a modern tool to aid in various teaching and learning environments. For the last few decades, the concept of reflective practice has been in vogue and there has been a growth in interest in the literature regarding reflective and experiential learning. The concept focuses on the integration of the elements of theory and practice. It emphasizes the cyclical chain of learning that comprises learning from one’s experiences and the well-informed application of the knowledge thus gained. There are several theories on reflective practice which lay down different ways of evincing learning from life experiences. The concept of reflective practice was first explored in 1933 by John Dewey in his study of the interrelation between experience, interaction and reflection.(Dewey, 1933) Other scholars such as Carl Jung, Kurt Lewin and William James have also reflected on this practice in their various works. But the concept found its first well formed expression in Donald Schon’s book The Reflective Practitionerpublisher in 1983.Schon defined reflective practice as the ability to reflect on one’s action and thus learn through this continuous practice. (Schon, 1983) Gillie Bolton, however, adopts a different perspective when he refers to reflective practice as “paying critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively... leads to developmental insight.” (Bolton, 2010, p. xix) Academic Theories on Reflective Analysis: Argyris and Schon, through their theories of single-loop and double-loop learning, introduced the idea of recognition and rectification of faults or errors in one’s work policy. The single loop theory states that the individuals or organisations stick to their old policies and strategies even after their errors have been pinpointed and rectification measures have been suggested. On the other hand, a double loop learning process ensures that the learning gained from the mistakes of past flawed policies is utilised to amend them and then properly integrated into the current practices, so as to avoid repeating the same mistake over and over again. (Argyris and Schon, 1978) Kolb’s theory of reflective technique relies on the conversion of information into knowledge through the practice of experiential learning. The practitioner of this technique tends to reflect on an incident or event after its occurrence to achieve a general understanding of the concepts involved in the incident. This knowledge gained from the understanding of one experience is then tested on a new life experience. This repeated and continuous application of this knowledge gained from life experiences helps to fortify past knowledge and experiences. (Kolb, 2004) Kolb’s experiential learning cycle has been further simplified by Graham Gibbs through his model of reflection. This model segments the learning cycle into six distinct stages, namely description of an event, feelings resulting from the event, evaluation of the experience, analysis of the situation, conclusions both general and specific, and lastly personal action plans devised from the learning cycle. (Gibbs, 1988) Critical Incidents Analysis 1. Group Dynamics The first critical incident during the course of the business simulation activity was the formation of our team. Since all the individual members were working for the first time as part of a team, we came to know one another’s way of thinking and style of working. In the course of our team work, we came across the set of similarities shared by us and the range of dissimilarities between us. We came face to face with the concepts of group dynamics, or the processes involved in the formation, maintenance and activities of the members of a group. The most prominent learning was that related to Bruce Tuckman’s five stages of team development- namely forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. (Nelson & Quick, 2007) During the forming stage, all of us got a chance to know each other and lay down the rules for the working of the team. In the storming stage, there was not much conflict in the team since we assumed a shared leadership and there was no explicit single leader to exert control or attract hostility of the group members. Thus the probable barriers between the leader and the followers were done away with right at the outset. During the norming stage, we developed a close network of communication within the team, set down the group norms and a high degree of cohesiveness was developed amongst the team members. This high cohesiveness helped us to perform well in the next stage, when we worked out strategies to raise our EBIT and sales revenue and devised plans to come at par with the cost leaders in the industry. Finally, the team was adjourned after having fulfilled its goal of making strategies to increase the sales revenue and EBIT. Apart from apprising us of the stages of team formation, working in a team also made us familiar with Kurt Lewin’s functional concepts of group decision-making, group productivity, group interaction, group cohesiveness and intra-group communication. (Cooper and Rothmann, 2013) We understood the chief elements of group structure i.e. norms, roles, status and cohesiveness. We ourselves set down the norms for our group by listing them under the learning contract of our project logbook. The roles of individual members were clearly outlined by designating specific work and task categories to each member. All members in the group enjoyed equal status as there was no discrimination towards or against any member. No one exercised undue influence in decision making and every enjoyed his/her freedom of opinion during the brainstorming and decision-making phases. There was a high degree of cohesion, belongingness and unity in the group, which can be attributed to the smooth flow of communication and the total absence of conflicts in the group. This phenomenon can also be explained on the basis of Theodore Newcomb’s Balance Theory which says that “persons get attracted towards each other on the basis of similar attitudes towards commonly relevant objectives and goals” (Mishra, 2009, p. 365) Since we all were like-minded persons with similar ways of thinking and similar styles of working, there was no instance of hostility or resistance in the group during the course of the project. 2. Strategy Concepts: The second major critical incident during our team endeavour was when we discovered that our sales revenue and EBIT were continuously falling and as a remedy to this, we chose the twin strategy of Cost Leadership and Differentiation. We planned to focus on three parameters- increasing the sales volume, decreasing the cost of production and enhancing the perceived product appeal. To increase the sales volume, we increased the production through full utilisation of the facility capacity. Moreover, we made additional investments in the quality of human resource to boost up the morale of the workforce. To decrease the cost of production, we cut down the expenses incurred on production, engineering and marketing activities. To enhance the product appeal, we invested in engineering and redesigning but made sure that the costs are kept within certain limits. According to Porter’s theory of cost leadership, both cost reduction and efficiency management form the crux of this model of competition. These two elements must be balanced in order to gain competitive advantage over one’s competitors. (Porter, 2008) Porter states that “Cost leadership requires aggressive construction of efficient-scale facilities, vigorous pursuit of cost reductions from experience, tight cost and overhead control, avoidance of marginal customer accounts, and cost minimization in areas like R&D, service, sales force, advertising, and so on.” (Gilligan and Wilson, 2012, p. 479) The cutting down of our marketing and engineering costs were effected as part of the cost reduction strategy. The emphasis on facility management and investments in the domain of HR quality were made to enhance the efficiency. 3. Reflection Techniques in Learning: The third critical incident occurred when, in our drive to increase the product appeal, we over-invested in the product reengineering and HR quality. As a result of this, our cost of production soared up and the sales revenue showed a sharp decline. At this point, we decided to review our actions, find out the flaws in our current strategies and then rework them to shape new strategies. Here, we implemented Argyris and Schon’s double-loop learning practice to search for the gaps in our strategy and then bridge those gaps by using sound investigation and contemplation. (Argyris and Schon, 1978)It was then that we realised that in order to score high on the parameter of differentiation, we had overlooked the aspect of cost reduction. The positive impact of the product differentiation was overruled by the negative impact of the increased costs, and this imbalance in our strategy equation was reflected in the steep decline in sales revenue. To amend our strategy, we also drew from Johns’ model of reflection which states that learning occurs at a faster rate when we learn from the experiences and knowledge of our mentors and colleagues, rather than when we learn only from reflecting upon our own actions and endeavours. (Johns, 1995) So, all through the course of our project we kept on consulting ourmentors and lecturers and referring to the opinions of various analysts from the car industry. Moreover, in the process of devising our new strategies, we took into consideration the price levels of our competitors in the industry for the four different car segments- low cost, family, eco-friendly and image cars. We arrived at our own price structure for the different segments on the basis of the price levels of the cost leader in the industry. Towards the end of the project, we used Kolb’s theory of reflective technique that emphasises on the transformation of acquired information into understanding through the practice of experiential learning.(Kolb, 2004) At first, we had applied the same general strategy on the sales of all four segments of the car. But our approach was later amended owing to a careful observation of the behaviour of our competitors in the same industry coupled with an exploration of the opinions and suggestions by industry experts. We moved on from the same umbrella strategy to framing slightly differentiated sales strategies for the different car segments. This can be attributed to the realisation that the different segments were intended for different target markets and target consumers. The diverse clusters of consumers thus targeted had different choices and preferences and hence could be pulled in through completely different strategies. Subsequent to understanding this basic concept, we realised our flaw and hence designed the sales strategies for the different segments based on their individual features, target audience and value elements. Hence our learning from our past experiences helped us to rectify similar future mistakes. It helped us to utilise the knowledge and information gained to improvise upon our style of thinking and working and thus strengthened our understanding of the related concepts. Conclusion Our participation as a team in the two-month-long MEGA business simulation helped us to learn a lot about the fundamentals of working in a team, making winning strategies and then reviewing those strategies using reflective techniques. We got a chance to get a practical experience of the theoretical concepts we had hitherto known. The team endeavour enabled us to integrate our reservoir of knowledge and information with some hands-on live experience and learning. We learnt transferable skills like planning, organising, evaluating and amending our course of action, while working in a group. We understood that it is the proper mix of strategies, rather than an individual strategy, which yields the most efficient and effective results. And lastly, the use of reflective techniques helped us to realise that no strategy or course of action is completely perfect or flawless. No matter how perfect it seems on the surface, there is always a scope for improvement and amendment, provided we reflect on our past and use this reflection to improvise upon our future actions. References: Schon, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action (Vol. 5126). Basic books. Bolton, G. (2010). Reflective practice: Writing and professional development. Sage publications. Boud, D., Keogh, R., & Walker, D. (2013). Reflection: Turning experience into learning. Routledge. Argyris, C &Schön, D (1978) Organization learning: A theory of Action perspective, Addison-Wesley Company. Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential learning in higher education. Academy of management learning & education, 4(2), 193-212. Dewey, J. (2007). How we think.Lightning Source Incorporated. Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by Doing. A guide to teaching and learning methods.Further Education Unit. Johns, C. (1995). Framing learning through reflection within Carpers fundamental ways of knowing in nursing. Journal of advanced nursing, 22(2), pp. 226-234. Nelson, D. L., & Quick, J. C. (2007). Understanding organizational behavior. Cengage Learning. Cooper, C., & Rothmann, I. (2013). Organizational and work psychology: Topics in applied psychology. Routledge. Mishra, R. (2009). Engineering Economics. Laxmi Publications Porter, M. E. (2008). Competitive strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors. Simon and Schuster. Gilligan, C., & Wilson, R. M. (2012). Strategic marketing planning. Routledge. Read More