To accomplish IACMR Mission that seeks to “advance the science，education and practice of Chinese management”, the first IACMR “The Scholarship and Methods of Teaching” Workshop was held at the Xi’an Campus of Guanghua School of Management (GSM), Peking University from July 20 to 22, 2019.

GSM Xi’an Campus

Before the lecture began on the morning of July 20, Dr. Jinyong Zhao, Operation Director of GSM Xi ‘an, delivered a short speech to warmly welcome the professors and participants of the workshop. He also briefed the audience the current programs undertaken by GSM Xi’an campus and its development and future prospects. He said that GSM Xi’an campus, as a part of the teaching network of GSM, is a platform for talent cultivation and scientific research exchanges in Xi’an and its neighboring regions. In the future, it will integrate high-quality resources in Northwest China to better serve such academic activities. On behalf of IACMR, Professor Neng Liang extended sincere thanks and handed over a Thank-You plaque to Dr. Jinyong Zhao to express the appreciation for the great support offered by GSM Xi’an.

Dr.Jinyong Zhao                                  Handing over Thank-you Plaque

The purpose of this workshop is to help those IACMR members with a passion to education become excellent teachers, thus help advance the quality of management education in China. Forty teachers attended the three-day teaching workshop. They came from 28 universities across China, including Beijing Normal University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Hunan University, Lanzhou University, Nankai University, Northeast University of Finance and Economics, Northwest University, Tongji University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University and so on. Among them, Northwest University was recognized for sending the biggest number of participants – eight faculty members.

Group photo of all members

With coordination and organization by Professor Neng Liang, Past President of IACMR and Professor of China Europe International Business School and supported by Professor Runtian Jing (Shanghai Jiaotong University), Professor Xuhong Li (Fudan University) and Professor Zhi-Xue Zhang (Peking University), the inaugural IACMR “The Scholarship and Methods of Teaching” Workshop was a great success. Professor Jialin Xie (University of Toronto) who had been a member of the team failed to make the trip because of sudden illness. The participants felt sorry about this, but they showed their full understanding and wished Professor Xie a speedy recovery.

In the evening before the start of the workshop, all participants participated in the “warm-up” exercise. They discussed about the biggest challenges they face in their daily teaching, what they most desired to achieve during the workshop and what learning output they expected. Each group came up with three goals to achieve by the end of this workshop.

In the first two days, each of the professors gave a half-day lecture (as follows) on the areas of their expertise.

1. Neng Liang  2. Runtian Jing

3. Xuhong Li     4. Zhi-Xue Zhang

Lecture One by Zhi-Xue Zhang (Peking University):

Underlying Logic and Teaching of Organizational Management Discipline (组织管理的学科逻辑与教学) 

Lecture Two by Runtian Jing (Shanghai Jiao Tong University):
Bridging the Gap between Research and Teaching (搭起教学与研究之间的桥梁)

Lecture Three by Xuhong Li (Fudan University):

Design of Paired-Cases: Principles and Practices (成对教学案例设计：原理与实践) 

Lecture Four by Neng Liang (China Europe International Business School)：

The Science and Craft of Case Teaching (案例教学的科学与手艺) 

In the evening, every participant joined his/her group members to discuss about  for discussions and each faculty advisor sat in all six groups and listened to discussions.

On the morning of Day 3, Professor Neng Liang took up extra half morning to finish his lecture of rich content on ‘The Science and Craft of Case Teaching‘. After Professor Neng Liang’s lecture, Professor Runtian Jing, Xuhong Li and Zhi-Xue Zhang had a panel discussion to share experience in ‘bridging teaching and learning to benefit each other‘ to end the morning session.

Panel Discussion；’Bridging Teaching and Learning to Benefit Each Other‘

The ‘performance stage’ was given to the participants on the last afternoon. First, each group sent a representative to report their summary and reflections on the workshop and how their three goals had been achieved. Then came the most exciting part of the workshop – the fierce group competition. A representative from each of six groups did a ten-minute exemplary teaching presentation before all the participants cast their votes on performance of each group to select the winning group. Next, Professor Xuhong Li offered her comments on each teaching demonstrator’s performance.

The on-site voting results revealed that Group Five won the Exemplary Teaching Award in the end. The award certificate was given to each member of Group Five. As a happy ending, each participant was presented the certificate of program completion to conclude the workshop.

Panel disussion

The winning group: group 5

Present the certificates

The 3-day teaching workshop was so impressive that the participants offered their thoughtful reflections or touching feedback. Here are some quotes.

– The four dedicated professors made good preparations ahead of time and set strict requirements on pre-reading and homework. They taught us how to ‘fish’ and offered their full knowledge and experience down to their last dime. Their values toward life will influence my whole career.

– A good learning harvest and touching warmth from the workshop! Each of the four mentors showed me power of role models and enlightenment of innovation. I realized my own gap and see the direction of efforts.

– Thanks to every tutor of IACMR teaching workshop! Like sunshine, you give us warmth and strength! Like rain, you nourish us and help us grow!

– You are my role models! I will try to be a role model and train up more role models!

– The conflict between teaching and research does not lie in itself, but in the way we look at and deal with it. Teaching and research can benefit each other. From the mentor professors, I realized it’s possible to embed scientific research in teaching practices, and discover and extract problems from teaching practices for doing research.

– This workshop enlightened me that the process of case analysis is the one of constructing knowledge points for students. The teacher only needs to lead students to summarize knowledge points, which could be really understood by students in the process of case analysis and summarization.

– The workshop instructors were very dedicated. They were on-site throughout the three-day program, facilitating our group discussions and helping us apply what we had learned to our own teaching. We were really equipped with an enhanced set of teaching skills and tools after the workshop and will be confident to apply them in our future teaching.

More detailed report in Chinese is available here.