A Seminar in Solving Problems on the Job

Abstract

EDUCATION should result not only in knowledge and experience but also in the ability to use them. The test of classroom learning, therefore, is whether it can be applied by the student in other roles. This is the assumption of all professional education. With this in mind the author several years ago devised a seminar in administration, the purpose of which was to enable the student to learn to transfer his learning to the job. This course requires the students to select problems they have on their jobs and to attempt to solve them. They must pursue the problem solving steps of deciding on a goal, collecting data, defining the problem or problems which must be solved to reach the goal, thinking of ideas for solution, testing those ideas by analysis (how will they affect the situation?), selecting one or more ideas for implementation, and planning the execution of the idea or ideas. Most exercises in problem solving (except in a scientific laboratory) stop with this. The course described here goes further. The students must act on their plans. If within the four months of the term it is possible for them to complete the solution of the problem, they must then appraise their success in meeting their goal (how did it work?). Each step must be reported to the class. Taking action is the hard part of problem solving. Many of us who can analyze a problem well and conceptualize its solution balk at the last step. For this involves human relations. It involves interaction with other people outside of the protection of the classroom, outside of the laboratory in which mistakes need not count and where the actor can find sup> The author discusses a seminar for graduate students of administration that he has offered for the last five years. The seminar requires students to solve live problems involving introducing change on their jobs. Solving the problems in a living situation requires constant attention to their relationships with the people they work with on the job and with their fellow students who are acting as consultants. As a result, the author contends, the learning experience is more effective in bringing desired changes in student behavior, than the usual teaching technique or type of course content.