Paired Courses: Using Liberal Arts to Improve Business Education

Abstract

This paper summarizes paired courses, a technique that is being used to incorporate the benefits of liberal arts into the business curriculum. This technique pairs a required business course with a liberal arts course that students take concurrently during a semester. The courses have overlapping themes and activities to build specific competencies that are desired by organizations, such as communication (all types), critical thinking and problem solving, emotional intelligence, and organizational professionalism. These competencies are identified by exploring national surveys and conducting a local survey of business professionals. The paired courses utilize a variety of exercises with the ultimate goals of building desired workplace-related skills in students and improving their practical reasoning ability. The exercises do this by strengthening students’ analytical thinking, understanding of multiple framing, and reflective exploration of meaning through various techniques. Many of the activities are explained in detail with some additional resources provided. Teachers can utilize the same activities or adapt them to their classroom.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Diversity Scenario Example with Teaching Notes

Scenario:

“You have an open position for a supervisor who will manage five white team leaders. Your top two candidates are an African-American male and a white male who are equally qualified. You hire the white candidate because the work group likes him and the team leaders said that they felt more comfortable with him. The vice president of human resources has just called you on the phone and asks you to explain why you hired the white male.”

Teaching Notes:

Diversity in hiring is often an issue because implicit biases can dissuade someone from hiring underrepresented minorities or individuals with certain traits. In this scenario, the African-American candidate is part of the out-group. This may be why they are not preferred, but it is unclear from the brief scenario, which provides students opportunities to openly discuss the variety of reasons one candidate is preferred over the other. The teacher can parallel this discussion with Othello by asking students why Othello was disliked in the play. These reasons can be race-related or not. The mixture of reasons is also possible with the scenario and recognizing when we are making decisions based on one versus the other is important. Additionally, the choice in the scenario is opposite to the choice made in Act I of the play, which can result in interesting dichotomies and discussion. What students decide to say to the VP of HR is not as important as their discussion about why this decision may have occurred and what could be done to improve the process if they encounter something similar in the future.

Appendix 2: How to Create a Cue Script

Go to: https://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/api

• 1. Choose a play title

• 2. Choose “Parts” from the pull-down menu. Click “Go.”

• 3. Choose a character’s name.

This will provide the cue scripts for the selected character for the entire play. The teacher will have to select a specific scene from the play, then go through this three-step process for each character in that scene, copying only the cue scripts from that scene. Because of this, the teacher will need a copy of the full play to identify the scene characters. See Knight (2019) “Part 2: Practical Matters” for more information.