Introduction:

The 4^th Industrial Revolution is driving educators to engage with new technology to enhance student learning (Hussin, 2018). Universities must align teaching and learning to meet the future needs of their students. As class instructors, we need to consider integrating more current technologies in our teaching methodology (Bonfield et al., 2020). This folio will explore one Subject Learning Outcome (SLO) of Leadership for Global Hospitality (LGH602). I will endeavour to show how aligning the “learning verbs” of this SLO with Web 4 digital tools will foster authentic and relevant student learning, central to a constructivist and connectivist learning approach.

Enhancing Global Leadership Learning with Digital Technology

The aim of this Leadership subject is to provide a basis for the understanding of what leadership is, what leaders do to be effective, ethical, and successful in the context of the global hotel industry (LGH602 Subject Outline). It explores the core theories of global leadership as well as new emerging thought leadership discourse. I will focus on SLO d), identifying that “develop and articulate” are used in Bloom’s Taxonomy classification of Understanding and Creating, to underpin reflective and simulated activities in the leadership context.

Figure 1. Leadership Subject Learning Outcome

Subject Learning Outcomes

a) Provide a comprehensive explanation of the role of leadership in the context of the global hotel sector.

b) Identify and appraise the application of models used to explain relevant behaviours for leadership in different contexts (service delivery and recovery, crisis and across cultures) and for different stakeholders including front-line employees, suppliers, management, and guests.

c)  Investigate and critically reflect on the emerging contemporary drivers in effective leadership, including adaptive leadership, ethics, sustainability, diversity, cultural and emotional intelligence in relation to students’ leadership development.

d)  Develop and articulate leadership goals and strategies that will consolidate personal leadership capacity through reflection and involvement in industry simulations.

Link to Assessment 3: Group Presentation of an Industry Simulation

Previous Teaching Delivery

In the weekly classes, students were required to undertake asynchronous activities including discussion threads and reflective work on videos depicting prominent leaders in discussion. These reflections were to be brought to the class to be reviewed. Kahoot and Mentimeter were used in some weeks’ activities to prompt participation. It is mandatory for a pre-recorded lecture to be posted each week to cover that week’s learning outcomes. And the final assessment activities focus on an online simulated hotel leadership team presentation. SLO d) was addressed by weekly activities of self-reflection in industry and personal scenarios. These activities were scaffolded towards the assessments (3). Student participation was low in these class activities. Since undertaking studies in the Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching, I now appreciate how to make better use of the 2-hour online tutorial.

The above activities, adequate in face-to-face classes, were transitioned to online classes in early 2020. Current literature provides compelling evidence that changes to the curriculum are necessary for future online education (Bonfield et al., 2020). James Robson (2018) explores teachers’ identities and how their social online spaces influence peer-to-peer engagement, and how individuals see themselves and their subject. He highlights that there is a complex relationship between the course structure, the organization’s culture, and the teacher agency. Digital technologies are only one part of this complex environment (Belisto, 2016). With the 4^th Industrial Revolution placing a high value on future education models, focusing on smarter, mobile education, as well as soft skills development, learning needs to be contextualized, interactive and peer-supported to engage with Gen Z students (Hussin, 2018).

The Theory Behind Revised Delivery

Higher education now is charged with the responsibility to deliberate on how best teaching practice aligns with fundamental learning theories (Chuang, 2021). While web-based technology tools focus on collaborative, user-driven content, supporting constructivist learning, Chuang (2021) also sees social media providing the interactions which support the Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1986). Applying constructivist learning theory, the teacher facilitates self-directed learning and social interaction to construct knowledge. At the same time, they are a role model, using such activities as storytelling, to provide vicarious experiences, vital to the social context (Chuang, 2021).

Education 4 prompts us to be transformative in our approach to the design and delivery of teaching and learning. Hussim (2018) provides a practical guide to illustrate 9 fundamental digital skills for instructors related to Education 4. She provides practical guidance in illustrating a table, detailing these digital skills. They centre around audio and video clips, visually engaging content, presentations, life-based scenario simulations, and non-traditional quizzes. This prompted me to look beyond the standard approach to leadership activities for my class. Engeness and Lund (2020) review Piotr Galperin’s work (1902-1988) as a valuable extension to Vygotsky’s work, examining the nature of students learning how to learn. Details of his work are beyond the scope of this paper, but his theories are the basis of much of Engeness (2021) research for 21^st Century design principles.

Exploring Leadership through Digital Technologies

Role Plays

Role-playing provides students to creatively interact with their peers, fostering a learning community and shared purpose. It requires students to synthesize aspects of the topic in the creative process (Erturk, 2015). Bloom’s Taxonomy identifies 6 levels of acquiring knowledge, and roles plays, including review feedback, involve collaboration, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation: requirements of SLO d). Leadership involves an influence relationship between people (Daft, 2018). Designing leadership activities in the classroom need to focus on each students’ capacity to grow and develop. Being informed by the guidelines of Engeness (2021) design principles of digital environments (DP 1-6), I researched active learning strategies to develop higher-order thinking skills in the students. As discussed by Chernikova et al. (2020), simulation-based learning offers an opportunity to practice complex skills. In their findings across 145 case studies, the positive effects on learning were seen in both the learning outcomes and the ability to scaffold across different phases of development. To provide an authentic form of active learning, I have created role plays embracing industry scenarios to be undertaken in online group work (Appendix 1). Smith et al. (2020) discuss that not all 21st-century students are as digitally literate as we perceive them to be so I will need to provide supported scaffolding at the introduction of these e-activities. According to Engeness (2021), the use of digital resources used in collaborative interactions moves learning to the internal plane of the learner (materialized action – communicative thinking – dialogical thinking – acting mentally). In the US Department of Education Report (2017), there is a discussion on the use of robots to stimulate dialogue. The use of robotic technology, as well as avatars, is being carried out by such companies as Mursion (https://www.mursion.com/) who provide this advanced technology, but it is beyond Blackboard Collaborate‘s current technology.   

Eady and Lockyer (2013) also emphasize that when students interact meaningfully with technology, this information goes to their long-term memory. They maintain the need to focus the activity on issues that directly relate to the schema construction. Selected role-play scenarios are based on real-life hospitality workplace environments. Each week, the scenarios are scaffolded to move through simple to the more complex challenges of leadership. Considering that more than half the students are undertaking this class outside of Australia, this group work is imperative to foster a sense of community and confidence in the use of digital tools. Each group of students set up a Padlet to document their observations of the breakout group work. For example, the first group exercises are discussion groups of three students on personality tests. Effective leadership traits are discussed in group breakout rooms followed by class presentations, detailing the outcomes. Week 4 would feature a role-play of a Job Interview where two students interview another student for a management position in a hotel. Each group returns to the class to deliver the observations of the interview. These type of role plays develop communication skills, in a leadership context, enhancing student confidence in a safe learning environment. By Week 5, students are encouraged to develop a proposed communication strategy for a crisis in a hotel scenario, for an assessment. Focusing on available digital technologies, students usually nominate WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Twitter for their teams’ communication. By encouraging students to explore recent public relations strategies undertaken by current hotel General Managers, usually through YouTube and TED Talks, they develop an appreciation of the positive value of video presentations and podcasts (Video example). Students will now be encouraged to create a simulated video as part of their leadership communication strategy, and this can be incorporated into a self-reflective journal in Assessment 2. Constructively aligning technology tools with subject learning outcomes is key to linking higher-order thinking to solve leadership problems (Engeness, 2021).

Quizzes

Developing students’ ability to articulate leadership strategies necessitates an understanding of leadership theories. These theories do not necessarily dictate set actions but inform and guide leadership thinking (DuBrin, 2016). Agarwal et al. (2014) provide survey data from 1400 students, promoting the use of quizzes in class for retrieval practice. Their studies identify that both synchronous and asynchronous retrieval improves learning. Reviewing the range of synchronous quiz apps, Socractive has settings that support teacher analysis both instantaneously, and retrospectively. Retrieval practise encourages flexible understanding, improving higher-order thinking skills and transfer of knowledge (Agarwal et al., 2014). Because of increased flexibility and analysis tools available in Socrative, Kahoot will be replaced in future lesson plans. In Chagas et al. (2019) research studies, they identify that students prefer Socrative over Kahoot because of its collaborative and competitive mode, as well as the choice to have a self-paced mode or receive immediate feedback for the answers given.

The Rationale for the Design Principles

Engeness’ (2021) design principles (DP1-6) of digital environments focuses on connectivism and a learner-centred approach, where technologies and social networks drive learning. Looking at the detail of her design theory, DP (1) states that students need to develop their understanding of the essential characteristics of the target concept. DP (2) suggests students must be a part of the construction of that activity. DP (3) states the entire activity needs to be integrated into a digital environment to enhance student understanding of that learning process. DP (4) details that some resources can be presented to assist the students’ development of the concept. DP (5&6) promote collaboration in the digital environment, giving emphasis to peer to peer and teacher to student feedback.

Constructivist theory states that knowledge transfer can be facilitated by involvement in authentic tasks (Harasim, 2017). By developing and creating new knowledge through collaborative role-plays, students can develop problem-solving skills, through active learning skills and contextualized learning. A reflective journal, part of assessment 2, adds to the asynchronous activities. In class synchronous activities include breakout rooms, video presentations and live online presentations.

My use of digital tools in teaching Leadership has been informed by the Community of Inquiry Model, identifying teaching presence and social presence as instrumental in the development of the role play e-activities. The TPACK Model explores the technology and pedagogical content which are important to the design plan for both the real-life scenarios and the theoretical quizzes.

Challenges

Role Play Participation

This experiential learning in contextual role plays is, as yet, untested in my teaching methodology.  Chandler (2016) identifies tutor skills as a usual problem with this digital tool of breakout rooms. My personal experience backs her findings, but with practice and planning, these obstacles can be resolved. The challenges I foresee will be in engaging all students in group work. I have experienced classes where the strong students (strong in language and confidence) actively engage while the more passive students leave the work to these active participants. When teaching leadership, some students cannot envisage taking on a managerial role, claiming that their introverted personality is prohibitive to an authoritative position. Although I emphasize self-development, in any social environment, is a form of self-leadership, this does not always resonate with these students. The other challenge I see will be a cultural consideration where some students prefer teaching as an instructional process of information feeding rather than constructive participation.

Breakout Rooms

Another concern I have is when students break into groups in breakout rooms, I can only be with one group at a time to intercede with facilitation if required. Any questions that students have, once in their groups, must be shared with the other individual groups, which takes time, and moving between rooms, can be clumsy. Role plays in the class as a whole would probably reinforce the high performers to participate, leaving the others to become the passive audience. Having used role-plays in the third assessment in past terms, due to mandatory participation for final marks, all students engaged. To rectify this possible lack of participation in the future, a strategy could be a tangible reward (badging) or recognition for weekly role-play participation. Or link engagement with some form of grading. This is yet to be explored and not in the scope of this paper.

Kahoot

And a final note on my past hesitancy to use Kahoot was based on my dislike of rote learning reinforcement and the lack of collaborative discussion. From my recent research, I have seen how Kahoot can be used more productively in a “fun” competitive environment. But, as discussed, I favour the Socrative model, which has the same digital characteristics but provides more flexible analytics and variable formats for learning.

Conclusion

Teaching leadership theories is achievable within a behaviourist classroom environment. To facilitate students to develop personally, to grow in their understanding of effective leadership, is more of a challenge. My research has led me to believe that authentic role plays in mirroring real-life hotel scenarios is the key to transformative learning. In exercising pedagogical strategies in design principles, with supportive teaching and social presence, students will be able to articulate leadership goals and strategies through reflection and involvement in industry simulations.

References

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Figure 1. Leadership Subject Learning Outcome: LGH602.  Leadership for Global Hospitality. Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School, Torrens University.

Appendix 1

Proposed Role Plays for Term 1, 2022.

• Conflict scenario in the team.
• Difficult conversations with underperforming employees.
• Speaking up against the group think.
• Interview a new potential employee for a managerial position.
• Confidence in introducing yourself to a group of strangers.
• Introducing yourself to a new team.
• How to start your leadership role in a new team.
• How to start your leadership role in a team that you have been in for some time.
• Giving instructions to a negative employee.
• How to be a role model to employees who need to deal with difficult guests.
• Setting new goals or targets for your department.
• Cultural conflict: Different cultures in the one workplace: walk a mile in their shoes : an activity to enable students to feel how it feels to be on the outer.