The Integrative Business Experience: A Practical Approach for Learning by Doing

Abstract

This paper describes an interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum innovation that links classroom learning to hands-on business and community service work. The program, called the Integrative Business Experience (IBE), requires students to enroll concurrently in three required core business courses and a practicum course in which they develop and operate a start-up business (based on an actual bank loan of up to $5,000) and use company profits to carry out a hands-on community service project. The IBE program is by nature a set of applied learning courses that clearly fulfill Kolb’s four steps in the Cycle of Learning and produces a wide variety of positive outcomes. This paper will explain the need for applied learning in business and how the IBE program is structured. Then, after an overview of Kolb’s Cycle of Learning (1984), the paper will apply IBE to Kolb’s four stages: 1) Concrete Experience, 2) Reflective Observation, 3) Abstract Conceptualization, and 4) Active Experimentation.