Greetings!

[Roger Putzel]

Hello, CLASSROOM-AS-ORGANIZATION Comrades!

No world-shattering news in what may be a long message; you can come back to it.

First off, a Rip van Winkle type of confession: the (M)OBTS listserv has migrated to Facebook.  I have looked at it but find that its content has become chitchat.  I have looked at Facebook but never sent a general message, and my children tell me not to.  So I am using this old listserv (XBTR), which reaches most of the colleagues I care about anyway.

XB, I can report, is alive and kicking.  XB itself is running at UCMO (as always), St. Michael’s College (where my colleague Paul Olsen revived it last year), and Mount Mansfield Union High School! At MMU David Alofsin has been running it for several years.  During this past year, despite all the COVID kerfuffle at MMU, they made a promotional video and had to open a second section of the course!  I would love to see David explain how he runs it with high school kids.  An idea for a web gathering? Matt VanSchenkof has resumed his academic career at Western Kentucky and is planning on running XB there.

As for the other classroom-as-organization efforts, I am not up-to-date.  Across the border, James Lapalm told me that he is designing a cao to teach at l’École de technologie supérieure ÉTS (Montréal).  I will try to get up there in December.

When I last communicated, Debby Thomas had just taken over as the new dean of her school when two minor distractions occurred:  COVID and the massive forest fire that came very, very close to Newburg, OR.  Also, she wrote me, her mother died at the same time.  Had it been anyone but Debby, I would have been worried.  Debby, I hope that you kept a journal of your experiences and will share it. Are you still teaching? Have they made you provost yet?

Stacie Chappell is (from my vantage point) near Debby, being in Nanaimo, BC in an administrative role. Not teaching? I hope that the ocean protected you, Stacie, from the heat there. Please report.

Elyssebeth keeps publishing.  Her latest is “A Journey to the Role of Facilitator: Personal stories unfolding alongside world trends” for her simulation and gaming fans (who have recognized her with a lifetime award).  Liz, are you still teaching?  What’s happening in Finland?

There are other rumblings but nothing firm to report.  Our literature gets a good number of “reads” and some citations on Researchgate.

I am about to submit a paper on delegating rank-order grading to an education publication. It takes effort to prepare an article when one is retired.  When I fix my tractor, it either starts or doesn’t. I don’t have to wait and don’t have to make sure the diesel fuel meets APA standards.

My wife Georgette is in Italy taking a course on the anthropology of the theatre (that’s all I know).  In a couple of days I will join her.  We’ll be in Sicily for a few days, then visiting a relative in Rome, then back to France to be with her mother – who is now 101 years old!

Please give your news, any and all.

Warm greetings from

Roger Putzel

 

 

[Matthew VanSchenkhof]

Hi all! We are running XB at Western Kentucky! Ann Embry teaches the fall course and I am teach the spring course.

Hope all are well!

Matthew VanSchenkhof

mvan...@gmail.com

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[Elyssebeth Leigh]

Hello from down Under,

First - congratulations to Matt - lovely to see you back where your passion is.

Then - congratulations to all the XBers in action. 

Finland has ended for me. It hurt -but I think the simplest way of saying it is that the students in the final online class had a good experience however the program director was no longer able to manage the ’sense’ of uncertainty that working experientially seemed to generate - for admin!

It was that or something about which I have no knowledge. So a mystery it remains. I was ‘ disappointed’ - and might one day share the emails by which it was done. This time later I can see the funny side of it - it represents much that XB tries to reveal to learners - but I failed to get the value and validity ‘validated’ by the person with power!

So - as Roger notes - I have been writing - a lot. 

And enjoying the challenge of recording and sharing what I have learned.

I have created a version of CAO - as a Complex Adaptive System which applies XB principles in an abbreviated form. I am working up an online version of it for the Australian Facilitators Network online conference - see https://www.afnconference.org.au  for details of the program. As usual I have bitten off more than I can chew - so am now working on reducing my concept a manageable scale. I’ll record it and share once the conference is over.

I’m also using the Cynefin framework as a core part of all that I do by way of introductions to CAO and simulations.

Laurie and I are working on a book for the MOBTS series with Edward Elgar publishing - the topic is facilitating simulations and games - developing skills and understanding about how to take on this vast crazy work of ’stochastic’ learning - where little is certain and your skills need to be so much more than ’standing to deliver’ :-) 

So lovely to hear you two are on the move Roger - we may be able to travel - anywhere - in the next month or two.

In the meantime I enjoyed this exchange between Ted Cruz and the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory - https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/people/2021/10/19/michael-gunner-ted-cruz/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=News%20Alert%20-%2020211019

I think Minister Gunner’s reply to Cruz says it all for us!

 I trust that everyone is safe and well, and hope that we can beat the virus and achieve ‘world peace’ sometime. I want to travel again.

Regards

Elyssebeth

Dr. Elyssebeth Leigh
elyssebe...@icloud.com
2017 Ray Page award - for lifetime achievement in simulation 
Life Member - ISAGA, Simulation Australasia

OrcID 0000-0001-6887-1388
Scopus ID 35145899700
WoS ID L-9935-2019
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/elyssebethleigh/

On 19 Oct 2021, at 11:31 am, Elyssebeth Leigh <elyssebe...@gmail.com> wrote:

During

[Debby Thomas]

Hello XB Group,

 

Thanks for getting this conversation started Roger! You are correct, I am dean of the college of business now, and in difficult times. I’m glad to serve my school and colleagues as we get back on our feet after some difficult leadership issues with our past two deans, and losing about 2/3 of our faculty either in downsizing or “the great resignation”. This year our incoming student population is at an all-time high, and just after a year of downsizing. I have five open positions to be posted any day now.

 

I am back to teaching halftime this year along with the role of dean. Stacie and David Bright and I created our own form of CAO, and that is what I’m teaching. I have a combined class of upper division undergraduates and MBA students all in one CAO classroom of 21 students. It’s been a great experience so far. I’m training a new professor in the methodology and she will be teaching this same class in the Spring. I created a doctoral level OB class in CAO style which went very well. I had a colleague pick it up and teach it that way with great results as well. We are considering CAO for our Part Time MBA program, but are a bit short handed on people who can design and teach it. That might need to be for another year.

 

Stacie and I are still plugging away on conference presentations and articles related to CAO. We are on our THIRD revision of an article now, and will work on a literature review and future research agenda next. After our book came out on CAO, I received the researcher of the year award at my university and got to give a faculty lecture on the topic. That was fun!

 

So YES, CAO is alive and well in my world. I’m thankful for those of you who came before me, patiently taught me and answered my questions. CAO is a blessing to me personally (love to teach it) and to my students (they enjoy the challenge of it, and the break from ‘regular’ classes).

 

Debby Thomas, Ph.D.

Dean, College of Business

George Fox University

414 N. Meridian Street #6252

Newberg, Oregon 97132

(503) 554-2809

www.georgefox.edu/business

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