List of Suggestions/Ideas

from

Best Practices Workshop

Teaching and Learning

·  In marketing the practice firm course to your school, have an open house where current students make a presentation on the firm—and serve food—free pizza is always good.

·  If your students are required to submit a portfolio of their work, have them include proof of their purchases in the portfolio.

·  The IBPF is not a “market-drive economy.” It is activity driven. What really happens is reciprocal “buying,” i.e., our employees will buy from you if your employees buy from us. This idea is not actually verbalized—it just happens from the activity. To sum this up, “to get more sales, you need to make more purchases.”

·  Employee purchases are processed best through the Purchasing Department. This way there is some “control” over what is happening. Also, if employees keep the same alias names each semester, purchases made at the end, can be “transferred” and paid for by the new employee.

·  Some products, i.e., travel, cars, motor cycles, etc. are too expensive for the “employees” to buy. It was suggested that these types of products and services come up with a “virtual” price—for example, a $3,000 trip to Italy could be priced at $300—with a note that this is a virtual price (10 percent) of what the actual trip would cost.

·  Have each department make two presentations during a semester on where the department is and what they are doing. This increases the team’s communications skill.

·  Rubrics are being used in many areas of assessment. CSBS will attempt to gather some of these samples, and with the specific teacher’s permission, have them available for sharing.

·  Have students work with a team of real business partners to learn “real world business.” If a strong business partner does not exist, use a “board of directors” or an advisory commission.

·  Video tape a presentation at the end of the semester/year to show to the next group of students.

·  If your school allows the students to take the course again as something different, the returning students can almost serve as the CEO or “teaching assistant.”

·  Another way to market the course for recruitment purposes is to send out a post card to eligible students.

·  Some frustration with accurate firm database information was discussed. As this is not under the control of CSBS, it was suggested that firms in the CSBS network share contact information.

·  To encourage trading earlier, it was suggested to have a “trading day.” End of October would probably be a good time. April/May is too late. Also suggested was to have teachers/facilitators send in some orders to the CSBS firms just to get them started. The teacher could add themselves to their bank just like an employee so they could pay for these few purchases. CSBS could deposit some money into the teacher’s account.

·  Making use of more video conferencing was suggested. CSBS will gather information from each school about their equipment, and then share that information with everyone.

·  To encourage making contacts, assign each student a specific country and have them send out an email to each firm on the list.

·  If your course utilizes “department head” or “department coordinators,” have a “training day” to get them started.

·  Pay for employees is usually done on an hourly basis and most firms pay overtime for the “employees” who put in extra time.

·  CSBS will look into some type of technology for the website to allow students to discuss what is going on in their respective firms—something like a chat room.

·  The suggestion was made to have a more experienced firm mentor a brand new firm. This would serve as a good source of support for both teachers and students. This will be strongly considered. Have a meet/greet in the fall with the mentor firm via video conference.