Peer Review

Organizational Behavior Activity

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Feb 27, 2020 by Business

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

This activity targets learning about organizational behavior using a student-team based activity conducted both in and out of the classroom over a 6-7 week timeframe. The level appears to be introductory, although the activity should be adaptable to both undergrad and graduate courses. The website for the activity provides a high-level procedural overview and email address for the activity’s creator to obtain materials on the framework, which is XB, or eXperience Base, developed by Roger Putzel.

Treating the classroom as an organization, we apply theories of management and organizational behavior (OB) primarily to our own experience, that is to structures, procedures, events, and people in the class. Groups of students have different functions, take responsibility for administering and running the class, and must work together for the organization to succeed. Members join one of three groups in one of four departments, each group having unique administrative, teaching, and grading responsibilities.

Type of Material:

Simulation

Recommended Uses:

The recommended use for this activity is to include some aspects in class, and some as homework. This needs to be a team project with 3 teams representing the different departments.

Technical Requirements:

Firefox 32.0.0.330

Edge v18

Java 8 Update 241

Adobe Reader Plugin for Firefox

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Learn what it feels like to be a manager
Work with others to reach a solution
Apply management and OB theories to a real-life situation
Critically evaluate another's performance
Determine how leaders emerge

Target Student Population:

College Upper Division; Graduate
Organizational Behavior or Management class

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Students need to have some knowledge of basic management and OB theory.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

The description of the procedure for the activity, which is high-level, is clear and easy to follow.
The XB framework seems like an appropriate choice for developing this type of student-team based activity.
The comments and assessment from the author’s own experience with the activity in the classroom were insightful and useful to someone considering this activity.
Good hands-on experience for students

Concerns:

Without the XB mini manual, as mentioned on the website, it is not possible to determine the quality of content because all we have is the list of instructions on this website. As noted, information is available on that manual through the instructor's contact email address.

A better explanation of the activity can be found here: http://academics.smcvt.edu/rputzel/xb/maximum_use_of_process_xb.htm

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

The content, that is, organizational behavior, is clearly stated as is the context of the classroom activity and the general steps or team activities that occurred over the 6-7 week period.
The author’s description of the assessment activities clearly states how learning outcomes can be measured within this activity as part of the student teams’ work.
Based on the week-by-week activities and times described, this activity should be easy to integrate into a course alongside other activities in the content area.

Concerns:

Because the description of the activity does not include information on the content of the XB manual nor descriptions of initial team assignment other than brief references to items such as setting up grading criteria and creating team norms, it is difficult to determine whether this activity builds on prior concepts or reinforces them progressively.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The procedures, with descriptions of week-by-week activities, are clear and give a high-level overview of the activity.
The idea of using the classroom and student-teams as a stand-in for an organization is engaging as it is difficult to simulate real-world environments in the classroom.

Concerns:

This activity does not seem easy to use without an instructor having prior knowledge of the XB concept. Otherwise, additional research will be required to learn about the framework before deciding to email the author for more information and the XB mini manual that was referred to.
From my web searches on the topic, the XB manual appears to be out of print, so without the author providing the additional content, this activity would be difficult to implement.

Other Issues and Comments:

This review was also based on the following information:

http://academics.smcvt.edu/rputzel/xb/maximum_use_of_process_xb.htm

A journal article describes some actual experience with the project and more description.

http://academics.smcvt.edu/rputzel/xb/RP%20JoBL%20XB%20New%20Paradigm.pdf

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