Charity group project for Intro to Management - an experiment

A  school new year and new classes have started. I want to write about an experimental project I will be doing with my Introduction to Management class on the male campus - and ask for input from any reader who is involved in a charity in the UAE.

Past group projects in this class I have taught for 3 years now, have included a focus on Abu Dhabi Plan 2030, organizing a charity event on campus and focusing on an innovation introduced in an Emirati company in the last five years. Now I want (well am forcing) my students to be innovative themselves and organize something in collaboration with an organization operating in the UAE.

The project involves choosing a charity in the UAE, contacting them and working with them to discover their needs - then planning, organizing and leading an event, awareness campaign, fundraiser, etc and then explaining the results and all the feedback loops involved (the control phase). The final report will be a one page summary outlining the highlights of POLC and a five minute video of the POLC process they took.

Now, given cultural and other boundaries, the video will force them to be innovative and creative and sensitive (all things they actually excel at). I think it will go well, but then again (as any regular reader will know) I am extremely biased concerning the outstanding talents of my students.

The input I could need from you – do you run a charity that needs some support? Do you know of a charity that needs support? If so please contact me at the email listed in my profile.

Of course I will keep you updated as to the results of the project, and also keep you updated of several other completely awesome projects students in my other classes are working on.

Smile and courage J

Stereotypes can be deceiving: Charity event posters

I guess I am not your typical professor - but that is fine with me. For the charity event "final report" I asked each team to make a poster. If you are asking what charity evet, well then you are not a regular reader of my blog. The group project this semester was to organise a charity event (on campus) - using the following guidelines:

1. Establish a vision (e.g. raise money for charity through...)
2. Plan (what, when, where, how, why, who, etc.)
3. Organise (who does what, get permissions, get collaboration from Charif, Joy and facilities (thank you as always guys), etc.)
4. Lead (motivate customers, make sure event funs smoothly, set-up, clean-up, etc.)
5. Control (feed back loop, how much money was raised, problems encountered, reaction of customers, lessons learned, etc.)

Yes, I take a process view of management - I understand that people are the most important aspect and the number one resource of any organisation - but people are complicated and processes are more manageable (yes, I was a member of CIRRELT for 8 years and processes and networks are my friend!)

So, the events the students did were awesome, of course I missed most of them because I was in Jordan for the paper development workshop (and yes, like any good students they made me feel SUPER guilty I was not there for the events).

Some of the events (and if I forget one or two add it in comments):

1. Soccer Play Station (blogged it);
2. Extreme Fighter Play Station;
3. Pie in the face (blogged it);
4. Selling traditional good cooked by Moms (ate too much);
5. Honey coffee (traditional food and drinks);
6. Some ball throwing thing with velcro (sounds like it was fun);
7. Pizza tasting (also a marketing event for one of the student's fathers company who has just introduced new frozen pizza to the market - heard from my sources they were very organised);
8. Other events (sorry I am not mentioning all of them)

The money raised will go to charity - no, I don't take it - they have to. And the students decide who it goes to (Dubai Cares, workers on the road cleaning the streets, Red Crescent, etc.). In all they raised thousands of dirhams and livened up the male campus for a few weeks.

But the posters... In academia we make posters, I have always spent a lot of time on mine (with TONS of help from friends back at Université Laval). I put them in the hallway to show what I was working on - here is the one I presented at the Academy of Management in 2008 (where I was hired for Zayed University).

I decided on posters because I want people/visitors to see the interesting things the students are up to and for the students to stretch themselves creatively - and posters are fun and make wonderful memories for me and all the people who help make the events a reality.

So, as I work at home I get a tweet that an art gallery of the posters is up on display on campus :) Yeah! Thanks Paul and David!!!!!

Here are a few of them (thank you Khalifa for tweeting the photos to me):

UAE Strategy Through Photographs: The Event

Part of the team and their honoured guest.

I have been a bit behind in blogging - but I got the final grades for this class in at least and will now blog their group-project/event. How I teach Strategy (well, how I teach everything) is to "force" students to look at the world around them in a different way. Analyse what they are seeing and how it reflects the strategy of a company (or country), the leadership goals of a manager or the "gap" between what is said and what is done.

I also want my students to learn the "theory" of management or strategy as it was been done here in the past (before oil and ex-pat managers if you will) to find if there was a different way/philosophy of doing things than the Western model we teach them from the textbooks. I want them to understand both the Western and the Traditional way of managing, leading, strategising and then find their own path.

I am thinking of writing a strategy handbook this summer about the stories we have learned about the past - that is if my summer ever starts :)

OK, back to this event that I missed being a super nerd in Jordan (which I blogged about and enjoyed so much it made me re-want to be a professor and researcher all over again). The students organised a photography event (first blogged about here First blogpost) to:

1. Raise money for charity
2. Show that the implementation of Abu Dhabi Plan 2030, UAE 2021 and the other Emirate's plans is happening all around us
3. Learn about the challenges of organising a biggish event (especially when we have JBI running the show)

Each small group of students had specific tasks, and yes, there were challenges - they worked through them as a group. They made plans to show the photos on the girls' side too (thanks for the help as always Mariam) but the two day sale was such a success on the boy's side that they decided not to go ahead with it.

They sold a lot - and raised enough money to fund drilling three water wells in Sri Lanka (which is very fitting with all the talk of water in class). They used their own funds to print the photos up and donated the unsold photos to the university.

Here are some photos of the event. I hope you enjoy them and I hope you are beginning to realise that Emirati men (even the young ones) are not like their stereotype that is being propagated even into the New York Times. I will miss them of course, and hope to see them again in the future - and I hope to be invited to sit as the "academic nerd" on their Boards of Directors in a few years' time!

Day 1: already 7 sold in pre-sale

Special visitor Dr. Sulaimann the VP of Zayed University

The one with the blue line (Sheik Zayed Bridge) is in my bedroom!

Banner they had made

Stereotypes can be deceiving: Charity event "Pies and professors"

While I was away in Jordan my students completed their charity events - as soon as I get photos/reports I will begin posting them - some of them were clever and well received.... others were very messy (still clever) and required the very active participation of faculty in staff (in truth, without them the event would not have happened, so I think them dearly).
So, this group of three young men, Khalaf, Zayed and Mohammed Khalifa decided they wanted to do something fun for the event. They had thought of the water drop thing - but it turned out to be quite expensive - other things as well were not very practical - eventually the planning got around to whipped cream pies in the faces of professors and staff - and students bidding on them. Clever, non?

Then the real planning, getting the uhm, willing targets to agree to participate... a rather clever email was written (yes, I added a certain degree of refinement, but the clever part was all them) to likely uhm... well, you get the picture! Of course they agreed!

Then, "designing" the protective garment, see photo 1:

Dr. Kate O'Neill as wonderful professor, Khalaf with good aim and Zayed keeping a watchful eye

Then the warm up, major anticipation of Dr. Kate, and the resulting huge laughs!

Dr. Kate I can never thank you enough!

I can see Khalaf asking himself "what did we do?!"

OMGoodness, this looks like extreme fun!

ZU has awesome professors!

And staff! Thank you coach Charif (and special thanks for all the help you gave the guys while I was away and always!)

Then the resulting mess when one of the team members seems to be running away!

Zayed get back here and clean up!

I guess they did end up capturing him to clean up :)

Zayed doing his part of the clean-up

Don't worry, the cleaners were compensated for the extra mess and the students pitched in (I know some people always want to think the worst of them). It was a fun event, raised money and created a sense of community on the guy's campus - I saw the photos from Jordan on twitter and I so regretted missing this (and the many other events that went on last week) - but as a proud professor I knew they didn't need me to have a great success (sniff, sniff). They did what all professors want their students to do - took lessons and structures learned in class and applied them to great success - in this case to raise money for charity in a super fun way.

Bravo les gars!

P.S A HUGE thank you for Dr. Kate and Charif - no fun/learning would happen at ZU without the professors guiding and the staff giving their assistance (not doing for the students, assisting) - sometimes I think this may be forgotten - but that discussion does not belong here I know!

Smile and courage and more photo filled non-nerd blog posts to come!

Co-curricular activities: or learning through doing

There is much talk in the scientific literature now about co-curricular activities. What the heck are those?, you ask… Well, a few months ago I didn’t know either, although I have been doing them since I started teaching English in September 2000, and continued in a the university setting, first in Québec and now here.

Co-curricular activities are outside the classroom activities that reinforce the formal curriculum. In other words it is learning by doing. I teach the structure or framework of the theory/concept/process in class and then force (J) the students to explore, understand and use the structure to achieve the learning objectives for the course.  

A simple example. For my Introduction to Management Course I want the students to understand, use, apply and adopt the basics functions of management (planning, organizing, leading and the feedback loop). I teach it, we brainstorm events in class, I test it and I get them to organize an event outside of class in small teams and write a very short report (with photos) describing the initial vision of the event, and then the planning (and the re-planning), the organizing (who did what), leading (motivating, making sure the event runs smoothly) and then the feedback (opinion of “customers”, how much money raised, challenges, etc.).

This year, in both semesters, I have had the students organize a charity event. The guidelines are – nothing illegal (e.g. no selling birds caught on your farm – I do not care if it is your farm, we can’t sell little birds on campus!), held at the University, and everyone in the group has to participate.

Yes, the guidelines are lose, yes I want the students to be creative – do they complain – uhm, just a little bit. Do they come up with super cool ideas, not all the time, but all the time they have fun (at least until now).  No, there are no rules of how much money needs to be raised or who they give it to – but they have to explain what charity they are giving it to and why. Again, I am blessed with allies on the men’s campus at Zayed University – without the Student Life team my boys would be lost – but, Joy will not send the email out, Charif will not make the posters, but they will help and guide and teach. (Thanks as always guys).

Sometimes there are minor frustrations and mishaps, but the minor mistakes are made in a controlled environment, with tons of support available to make minor adjustments.

The next two weeks are going to be busy ones on the boys campus as karak is made and sold, teachers are used as targets for cream pies, Play Station is played and traditional items are sold.

This is just one example, you have read (or can now go read) about the many others described in this blog. Yes, it is easy to teach management through these types of activities – but there have to be a million ways to have the students “do” and “apply” and “incorporate” the learning objectives specific to your subject matter – just be creative…

I will let you know in a few weeks how the boys did, and yes, if there is a photo of me with a pie on my face I will post it – let’s just cross our fingers all the students have bad aim!