Teaching & Learning Conference 2015 - London School of Business ...

Teaching & Learning Conference 2015 Exploring the Role of Servant Leadership in Higher Education 8 July 2015 Royal National Hotel, Bedford Way, London WC1H 0DG

Conference Sponsors:

Welcome Welcome to the London School of Business and Management’s 5th annual Teaching and Learning Conference. This is an important event in our academic calendar, giving as it does the opprtunity for all of us to shape and enhance the education we provide by sharing ideas and practices, and by connecting with esteemed colleagues, friends and peers. The theme of this year’s conference - Exploring the Role of Servant Leadership in Higher Education - reflects a dialogue that has been taking place within our own institution over the past year as we have worked to enhance both our corporate culture and the education we offer our students. At its core, Servant Leadership promotes trust and respect in the practice of leadership and management. It understands that the quality of the relationships within an organisation is core to its effectiveness and success. Today’s conference will consider and explore the potential of Servant Leadership to transform the experience of education in our society, and, in turn, nurture within all of us the sense of integrity and ethical vision required in our world today. I know that the success of the conference depends ultimately on the many people who have worked in the planning and organising of it and I offer them my heartfelt thanks for their work. Many thanks also to those who submitted abstracts, papers and posters, and, indeed, to all of you who have come together to give this conference life and soul.

Finally, I wish to thank the conference sponsors, Pearson and Vitalsource, for their generous support of this event. Enjoy the day,

John Fairhurst BA PgDip MPhil MBA Solicitor SFHEA Managing Director and Academic Principal

Agenda 9:00 - 9:30

Registration and Refreshments

9:30 - 9:40

Conference Opening: Mr Nick Hillman Deputy Academic Principal, London School of Business and Management, UK

9:40 - 10:40

Keynote Speaker: Dr Edward L. Queen Emory University, USA Servant Leadership in Education

10:40 - 11:00

Tea and Coffee

11:00 - 11:30

Dr Milton Sousa Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Netherlands Education to Develop Servants... Capable of Leading

11:30 - 12:00

Dr Kae Reynolds University of Huddersfield, UK Performativity of Teaching and Learning: a Critical, Autoethnographic Commentary and Call to Servant Leadership in UKHE

12:00 - 12:30

Mr Cal Courtney London School of Business and Management, UK Educational Communities, Servant Leaders and the Age of Postmodernity

12:30 - 12:50

Panel Session Dr Edward L. Queen, Dr Milton Sousa, Dr Simon Taylor, Mr Cal Courtney and Dr Kae Reynolds

12:50 - 13:50

Lunch

13:50 - 14:00

VitalSource Best eLearning Practice Prize

14:00 - 14:20

Mr Dale Millington, Plymouth University, UK Dr Irene Kaimi, Plymouth University, UK Dr Stephen Gomez, Pearson, UK Applying the Principles of Servant Leadership to Assessing the Efficacy of Digital Learning Resources in Higher Education

14:20 - 14:40

Ms Ron Cambridge London Metropolitan University, UK Today’s Students – Tomorrow’s Leaders!

14:40 - 15:00

Dr Joe Stevens London School of Business and Management, UK Passing the Work of Others for Credit Developments in 2015

15:00 - 15:20

Mrs Kumari Lane London School of Business and Management, UK Servant Leadership: Empowering Learners through ‘Flipped’ Classrooms

15:20 - 15:40

Coffee and Poster Sessions

15:40 - 16:00

Dr Simon Taylor London School of Business and Management, UK Development of a Philosophy and Practice of Servant Leadership through Service Opportunity

16:00 - 16:20

Mrs Isobel Wood London School of Business and Management, UK Education as a Context for the Development of Servant Leadership and the Outcomes for Lecturers and Students in the Classroom

16:20 - 16:30

Best Poster Prize and Closing Session

16:30 - 19:30

Post-Conference Drinks Reception

Session Abstracts Servant Leadership in Education Dr Edward L. Queen, Emory University [email protected]

The current threats faced by higher education potentially are more dangerous than previous ones due to the fact that these threats are internal. Higher education today, speaking primarily, but not solely, for the Anglo-American world, has lost its way, has lost its heart. It does not know its purpose and all attempts at defence are bound to fail as a result. In this presentation, Dr. Queen will argue that a serious and deep incorporation of Servant Leadership in higher education can address that lack of purpose, by returning it to its historical and rightful role in the formation or development of individuals and an emphasis on cultivating in all of its members a deep and reflective sense of duty to the public good.

Education to develop servants… capable of leading Dr Milton Sousa, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University [email protected] The original 1970 essay of Robert Greenleaf (The Servant as a Leader) alerted to the alienation of the school from its surrounding community: “The school, on which we pinned so much of our hopes for a better society, has become too much a social-upgrading mechanism that destroys community. Now we have the beginnings of questioning of the school as we know it, as a specialized, separate-from community institution. And much of the alienation and purposelessness of our times is laid at the door, not of education, but of the school.” This session will revisit this statement in the current year of 2015 and provide a critique on the mainstream educational system in light of the Servant Leadership model in an attempt to answer the question: which education should we have to promote servants capable of leading?

Performativity of teaching and learning: A critical, autoethnographic commentary and call to servant leadership in UKHE Dr Kae Reynolds, University of Huddersfield [email protected]

This paper proposes that the way we define educational quality, in terms of performance or values, merits reconsideration. The presentation outlines current tensions in UKHE through an autoethnographic reflective exploration of the author’s experience as an expatriate member of academic staff in the United Kingdom. Evaluation and synthesis focus on the performative nature of teaching and learning in HE and the disconnect between student needs and institutional frameworks impacting curriculum design, assessment, feedback, and support. A central theme of the discussion focuses on potentially detrimental impact of leadership characterized by administrative Taylorism, megalomaniacal performance indicators, and excessive standardisation on the quality of education. The potential for Servant Leadership as a guiding principle for teaching philosophy is considered and mapped to current tensions in UKHE.

Educational Communities, Servant Leaders and the Age of Postmodernity Mr Cal Courtney, London School of Business and Management [email protected] The Enlightenment, with its belief in reason and human progress, gave birth to what we recognise today as public universities. These institutions have played an important role in making education available to the masses and have in turn influenced the societies in which people live. Leadership within these institutions reflected the values and concerns of The Enlightenment while embodying both the positive and negative aspects of “modern” thought. In recent years scholars have drawn our attention to certain shifts in Enlightenment thinking, shifts so significant that the term “postmodern” has been coined to describe them. This paper will examine the nature of postmodernity and ask what education and leadership can look like in a postmodern world.

Applying the principles of servant leadership to assessing the efficacy of digital learning resources in higher education Mr Dale Millington, Plymouth University, [email protected] Dr Irene Kaimi, Plymouth University, [email protected] Dr Stephen Gomez, Pearson UK, [email protected]

Servant Leadership is an empowering set of democratic principles that distribute power to help people develop to their full potential. Higher education also intends to help develop people to realise their academic potential; however, the way it is now delivered is moving from the pre-eminence of the lecturer as ‘sage on the stage’ to ‘guide on the side’ and with this, the recognition of students’ active engagement in their learning and students as partners (Healey, Flint and Harrington, 2014). Here, we describe a unique partnership between university student and tutor and education publisher in the assessment of efficacy of new digital learning resources.

Today’s students – Tomorrow’s leaders! Ms Ron Cambridge, London Metropolitan University [email protected] This presentation examines an organisational practice which focuses on the development of substantial skills of a differing and diverse cohort of non-traditional students at a higher education institution. Whilst society, as well as many business corporates (what exactly is a business corporate?), realise the benefits of a diverse workforce, it has been found that many non-traditional graduates do not encompass basic soft skills (Rao, et al., 2011). Similarly, non-traditional students themselves have also voiced a problem of ‘fitting in’, both whilst in university (Leathwood and O’Connell, 2003) as well as when attempting to be accepted into the corporate world. It is therefore argued: that only by the joint investment of all of society’s stakeholders can today’s students become our prominent leaders of the future.

Passing the work of others for credit Developments in 2015 Dr Joe Stevens, London School of Business and Management [email protected] This paper will examine the history and development of student plagiarism, from its first prominence as part of the cut-and-paste/Google/Wikipedia age, through to a new and more sophisticated era in which students use a variety of methods to defeat similarity checkers. The paper will consider the very latest best practice and discuss a variety of tools and methods to be deployed in order to try and suppress this rising problem throughout our education system. In particular, it will examine those groups that research identifies as being most at risk in order to make staff aware.

Servant leadership: Empowering learners through ‘flipped’ classrooms Mrs Kumari Lane, London School of Business and Management [email protected] A teacher who is a Servant Leader should work towards the goal of enabling each student to be a Servant Leader. To achieve this goal the teacher should empower students to help each student to grow and have the opportunity of being a leader. Do our current teaching methods empower learners? To empower learners their lecturers must themselves be empowered, so that they can empower their students. To empower ourselves and our students our learning/teaching strategy should include the establishment of a community of learners. An obstacle to empowering learners is the teacher-centred learning methods we adopt by delivering traditional lectures and tutor-led seminars/tutorials. The author argues that ‘flipped’ classrooms are the way forward to empower learners and enable them to become critical and independent learners, developing skills such as leadership, communication and team work.

Development of a philosophy and practice of Servant Leadership through service opportunity Dr Simon Taylor, London School of Business and Management [email protected] Servant Leadership is increasingly being promoted as an effective approach to leadership, with some proponents arguing that leaders need to serve something beyond themselves. Modern Servant Leadership theory owes its origins to Greenleaf (1977) who proposed a new leadership paradigm in contrast to the ‘leader’ centred focus, which has tended to adopt a command-and-control approach. However, there is relatively little known about how to develop Servant Leadership.

Education as a Context for the Development of Servant Leadership and the outcomes for lecturers and students in the classroom Mrs Isobel Wood, London School of Business and Management [email protected]

This paper looks at the concept of Servant Leadership in an educational setting. Stephen Covey (1977), writing about Greenleaf’s book on Servant Leadership (1977), spoke of the concept of Servant Leadership being in contrast to many leadership styles in modern organisations which may give rise to “low-trust cultures and low empowerment of employees”. He advocated that empowerment should be based on Servant Leadership, where creative talent, commitment and loyalty from employees support a type of leadership which is “based on practice, not just talk”. Can lecturers in the classroom serve education more effectively if they themselves are positively and fully engaged in their work? If the answer to this question is yes, then do engaged lecturers produce more engaged students in the classroom?

Poster Abstracts Analysing the Concept of a “Smart House” and Evaluating it on the Basis of a Prototype Mr Peter Kurtosi

Today, technological achievements are integrated into our daily life in many areas – making our lives more comfortable. One of these areas, which is becoming more and more popular, is based on Smart House solutions. This dissertation focuses on Smart House solutions that make the daily lives of elderly and disabled people easier. Our Smart House solutions have been evaluated using a focus group with nine elderly and disabled people. The results of the evaluation suggest that the proposed Smart House can significantly improve the life of the target group and can be considered for wider adoption by the public or the National Health Service.

Analysing the use of cloud computing for educational institutions in the UK Mr Tony Alma Kiangebeni The inspiration behind the literature review is to closely look at the existing studies in relation to cloud computing for educational institutions in the United Kingdom. The study mainly focuses on how cloud computing is benefiting educational institutions and why other institutions are still refraining from embracing it straightaway. It also engages in highlighting crucial concepts and challenges in respect to the topic. Cloud computing is currently occupying an important role in computing innovation and it is here to stay (Canal & Villari, 2013). Many commercial organizations are already enjoying the benefits of cloud services and virtualization; the same can be enjoyed by the educational institutions.

Improving the selection of personal data for target marketing by third party Mr Nashville Williams This study focuses on improving the selection of personal data for target marketing by third parties. Several analytical methods and tools (qualitative, quantitative and smart survey software) were used to capture and analyse the findings. This research has brought not only a theoretical solution to the current challenges facing target marketing, but has developed an application that has further reinforced the theoretical solution - that good data management is important to identify and improve the selection process for the target audience. Therefore an extra chapter was needed to cover this investigation.

An Investigation of Mobile Payment Applications used by consumers in the UK Mr Olugbenga Afolayan Dr Nickos Paltalidis In recent years, the development and the adoption of Mobile Payment Applications have transformed mobile devices into a medium of initiating, activating and confirming payments for goods and services. Despite this fact, a mobile payments boom has yet to begin. Many consumers are not yet aware of the availability of this technology, and security and fraud are still identified as barriers to the adoption of this.

A prototype web based timetable mobile application for London School of Business and Management Ms Ana Maria Budica

Currently, the lives of students are full with a mixture of classroom and individual events, which occasionally makes students disorganised. Students miss classes, are late for lectures and sometimes go to the wrong classroom by mistake. Some students continually rely on others to identify in which classroom they will have their next session. Apart from that, they also forget to submit assignments on agreed dates and more. All of this demonstrates the disordered organisation in a student’s life. This work presents a prototype web based timetable mobile application in order to help students and staff of London School of Business and Management to consolidate timetables resourcefully. The prototype is designed based on the literature review findings and on the results of a survey about the usability and usefulness of implementing a web based mobile application from the point of view of students and staff members.

Keynote Speaker Dr Edward L. Queen

Dr Edward Queen is an expert on issues related to professional and social ethics, religious and ethnic conflict, and civil society. A former program officer at Lilly Endowment, Inc., Dr Queen has consulted with numerous nonprofit, governmental, and educational organizations on management issues and ethics policies. Dr Queen is the Director of the Ethics and Servant Leadership and Coordinator of Undergraduate Studies at Emory University’s Center for Ethics. He also serves as director of research for Emory’s Institute of Human Rights and co-convener of the Initiative on Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at Emory. The D. Abbott Turner Program in Ethics and Servant Leadership (EASL) promotes servant leadership and ethically engaged practice throughout the Emory community. Under Dr Queen, EASL works to aid, inspire, and support all members of the Emory community in developing the commitment, courage, and skills to serve and lead for the common good.

Conference Sponsors:

VitalSource is a leading educational technology company and the preferred choice among education institutions, faculty, corporations and publishers who want to provide students with learning experiences that are technologically unrivalled and brilliantly simple. By bringing the benefits of digital course materials and interactive, customized content to publishers, to institutions, faculty, students and corporations, we are well-positioned to meet our overall goal of developing brilliant learners. For a copy of our recent case study with Plymouth University, contact [email protected]

Whether it’s in the classroom, in the workplace or at home, Pearson provides the tools for teachers, educators, learners and parents to make the most out of learning. Our content, assessment, training and information systems are designed to make learning more enjoyable – as well as more effective.