Overview

The ABT portfolio brings action-based learning to the classroom through innovative use of Classroom Response Systems and proven teaching methodologies. Recent advances in learning theory suggest that experience-based learning and group training are more effective than traditional teaching approaches.

The ABT approach combines the strengths of case-study and in-class simulation, providing an effective learning environment where participants experience the effect of their decisions and actions through immediate feedback and periods of analysis. Effective use of simulations also serves to reinforce and extend the learning achieved from business theory and case studies.

The Learning Cycle

Each ABT module presents a business scenario that requires participants' input in order to progress - the module allows each session to develop in response to these inputs whilst maintaining control of the learning process. A typical session progresses in a cycle of focused stages; design, run and evaluate, where each cycle is configured to expose key learning points and to build on previous iterations.

In this way the principles of the business improvement best practice of Plan-Do-Study-Act (Deming) are embodied.

Management Education

This approach is particularly effective for teaching managerial and business issues, where the real difficulties and complexities in practice are often due to interactions between different perspectives, such as technology, organisational behaviour, operational and commercial. The ABT approach provides mechanisms where different perspectives can be incorporated into a single learning experience.

Learning Effectiveness - Experiential Learning

The effectiveness of the ABT approach can be explained by reference to literature on 'Experiential learning' - learning through reflection on doing - as defined by Kolb and Fry (1975) and by Blooms taxonomy.

By going through the ABT learning cycle, participants experience each of the learning styles defined by Kolb:

• Concrete Experience - participants 'live' a business situation (in which keypads gather data on decisions and actions and the future situation is governed by their own and other students' responses)
• Reflective Observation - In the evaluation phase students review the previous run using a number of approaches such as observation, opinion and data analysis.
• Abstract Conceptualisation - possible changes/solutions are suggested and discussed by students as well as relevant models and theories, explained by the facilitator, that can be related to the exercise
• Active Experimentation - through the iterative cycles students test the outcomes of changes suggested.

Distinct phases that employ each of these cognitive states act to bring understanding to students with a range of learning styles; the mix of styles and repeated cycle reinforces this learning.

The ABT modules require students to be "engaged in such higher-order thinking tasks as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation" (Bonwell and Eison 1991) relating to Bloom's hierarchical taxonomy of cognitive learning (Bloom 1956, revised by Anderson et al 2001), see below.

Clicker deployment in business education can generate cognitive learning at all levels of Bloom's taxonomy. ABT's aim is to assist educators in achieving the higher levels through varied questioning techniques, clicker usage, activities and simulations designed to generate debate.

Active Learning; the benefits

Literature abounds on why active learning is beneficial; what criticism there is tends to focus on the inadequacy of experimental proof, due mainly to the vagaries of the classroom environment. A good summary of benefits by Svinicki can be found at the University of Texas, repeated here:

Ten Benefits of Active Learning Drawn from Theory

1. Participants are more likely to access their own prior knowledge, which is a key to learning.
2. Participants are more likely to find personally meaningful problem solutions or interpretations.
3. Participants receive more frequent and more immediate feedback.
4. The need to produce, forces learners to retrieve information from memory rather than simply recognizing a correct statement.
5. Participants increase their self-confidence and self-reliance.
6. For most learners, it is more motivating to be active than passive.
7. A task that you have done yourself or as part of a group is more highly valued.
8. Participant conceptions of knowledge change, which in turn has implications for cognitive development.
9. Participants who work together on active learning tasks learn to work with other people of different backgrounds and attitudes.
10. Participants learn strategies for learning itself by observing others.

Why Keypads?

In a world proliferating with hardware and software technologies, why add keypads to the mix? ABT advocate the use of clickers for education because they are robust, and simple enough that their usage is neither daunting nor distracting. Other devices, particularly web-enabled ones present problems of standardisation and tend to distract participants with their other capabilities; games, chat, SMS, email, web etc.

Why not...

Download a one-page pdf summary of the ABT approach.

Or watch videos of simulations in action and client comments