 "Photo: Ken Muir")
Students should not consider the new $70 million Rawls College of Business Administration building just a “new building,” but rather “new business,” because the college of business intends to bring a new learning experience to students.
Donald Clancy, the associate dean of the college, said new technology will be implemented into the building to enhance the learning experience.
Professors will have the opportunity to digitally record classes so students can review them via the Internet, Clancy said, and personal computers in labs will be replaced by laptops.
He said another key element will entice students to spend more time in the building is the group workspace that will be provided, as well as a cafeteria.
“In a business environment you’re seldom working alone and more working with groups,” Clancy said.
Students will be able to interact more with each other and faculty members because of more permanent space available, he said.
“In terms of how you run a business, it’s closer as opposed to studying alone and working alone,” he said.
Professors also are motivated to utilize the building in their teaching efforts, Clancy said.
Mike Ellicott, former vice chancellor for Facilities Planning and Construction, said before the new building could begin construction, the college administrators had to rethink how it was going to teach business.
Clancy said everyone involved in the college of business also was involved in the project, including an advisory body of alumni and interested friends.
“We want to ask ourselves, ‘Can we make this the best experience for the students?’” said management professor Ronald Mitchell.
The ideas and approaches are things that have always been discussed among professors and students, whether it is at a dinner or social gathering, Mitchell said.
Concerning the management area, he said the department is doing three things to enhance the learning experience for students; cross-campus courses, experiential learning and critical thinking.
Cross-campus courses will allow any student to register for management classes, Mitchell said.
The second addition, experiential learning, will take full advantage of the spaces the building is going to incorporate for project classes, he said.
“Most college classes you learn, look, do. You read a textbook and hear some yack about it,” Mitchell said. “But after you realize what you learned and looked at didn’t quite add up once you get out there in the real world.”
The idea of experiential learning is to reverse the implementation of the material, he said. Instead of learn, look and do, it will be do, look and learn. This will allow students to immediately interact with the material and then turn to the textbook for more clarification.
The material becomes more relevant, Mitchell said, and answers any confusion with the material and the retention is longer.
The third aspect involving critical thinking is in correlation to Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of thinking, he said, which involves an order instead of pyramid steps in learning.
“At the bottom layer you gain knowledge, then comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis which is putting it all together, then evaluation — actually making a good decision,” Mitchell said.
In an era where Google and Wikipedia rule, he said, classes should not be a rehash of the information students can get from those places. Instead, the point of the university is to interact with people and elevating the critical thinking context — that is why students come to the university.
“It’s hard to drive a Maserati when you’re in the middle of the desert,” Mitchell said. “There are certain things you can’t do very well if you’re not with the people who have the same interest.”
When people work together, he said, there is always going to be someone who is going to have an idea or thought that is going to make the productivity better. The new agenda for the college will be a popular culmination among the students according to student response.
“When you stick to the book you only get one aspect of the learning experience,” said Jase Gill, a junior management information systems major from Lubbock. “You’ll be more prepared than just book work.”
Clancy said the new building will be more inviting in terms of recruiting students and faculty.
“We’ve been working on this project for eight or nine years since we started,” he said. “There’s a level of excitement around the college to it arriving.”
Clancy said the new building will be partially occupied by Fall 2011 and fully occupied by Spring 2012.
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