Curriculum Outline on Corporate Takeover and Event Planning Simulations

&2 Teaching Minds pharmaceutical company engaged in a hostile takeover of a smaller, but highly successful, competitor. Students experience the tough ne- gotiations, the elimination of dedicated and talented individuals, and the painful shuffling of roles and responsibilities that accompany ma- jor change in a modern corporation. Students also confront the com- plicated (and sometimes conflicting) relationship between social re- sponsibility, legal responsibility, and profit motive, as they witness the company’s attempt to establish a new research facility in a blighted town as a consequence of the merger. As students consider each epi- sode, they critique the actions and reactions of the central characters, advise them on next steps, and glean lessons related to negotiation, change management, legal and ethical issues in corporate governance, and working with other cultures, STORY 7: SELLING AND IMPLEMENTING SOLUTIONS Students begin their work as new project managers at a premier event- planning company, World Class Events. They begin by qualifying and prioritizing opportunities to propose work to prospective clients, pitching to senior management which of the proposals should receive the greatest budget, based on potential profitability, likelihood of win- ning, and other relevant considerations. They create a project scope document for the sales effort, first planning and attending a simulated meeting with event-planning experts to determine a vision for the event, including risks and open questions for the client. They then en- gage in a role-play call with the client, introducing World Class Events and clarifying the project vision. Of course, the intent of this curriculum is to prepare students to go out into the business world. So, there is a natural subject orientation. The subject is business. But after we acknowledge that, everything else is different. The curriculum was designed with the 12 cognitive pro- cesses in mind. Let’s see how that was accomplished. The real issue in learning in any arena of knowledge is getting better at the cognitive processes that underlie that knowledge. The processes involved in learning have been with us as long as there have been humans. School, and subject-based education, is a more recent invention. To understand how human learning works, we need to think more deeply about how we can teach these processes. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023808