High Educ (2008) 55:3350

DOI 10.1007/s10734-006-9036-2
O R I G I N A L PA P E R

Learning-based curriculum development

Claus Nygaard Thomas Hjlt Mads Hermansen

Received: 1 June 2005/Accepted: 25 August 2006/Published online: 3 October 2006

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006

Abstract This article is written to inspire curriculum developers to centre their efforts on
the learning processes of students. It presents a learning-based paradigm for higher
education and demonstrates the close relationship between curriculum development and
students learning processes. The article has three sections: Section The role of higher
education (HE) institutions presents a discussion of the role of higher education in the
knowledge society. Section Contextual learning presents the paradigm of contextual
learning which we see as a useful foundation for curriculum development. Section
Curriculum development in practicethe BETA course shows how a particular course
in Business Economic Theory and Analysis has been developed using this paradigm. The
article will be of interest to all academics interested in students learning processes but is
especially relevant to those responsible for curriculum development.
Keywords
processes

Contextual learning Curriculum development Students learning

The role of higher education (HE) institutions

It may be a cliche to begin an article by arguing that a primary task of HE institutions is to
prepare students to manage flexible jobs in changing markets. But the importance of this
task cannot be ignored. Societies, businesses and technologies are changing rapidly, and
this development has led to the creation of what is today commonly labelled the
knowledge society. Over the last few decades we have seen radical changes in intra- and
inter-firm organisation with the demise of the old economy (Best, 1990; Lash & Urry,
1987). Flexible jobs, organised in flexible
C. Nygaard (&) T. Hjlt M. Hermansen
Department of Organization and Industrial Sociology & CBS Learning Lab,

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Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej 14a, Frederiksberg
2000, Denmark
e-mail: cn.ll@cbs.dk

34

networks and embedded in flexible societies, demand graduates with the ability to selfproduce and self-develop knowledge. As the tasks, roles and identities of the modern
worker have changed with the introduction of new technologies, the need for new
competencies has increased. Flexibility is a much needed competitive advantage within
firms and, to a large degree, this can be achieved by hiring interdisciplinary employees
with transferable knowledge, skills and competencies (Assiter, 1995; Harvey & Knight,
1996). Employees have to be flexible, they must be able to learn how to learn, and they
need to develop their own competencies while working in loosely coupled networks.
Furthermore, they have to multitask between several integrated or disintegrated projects
during a typical days work. This societal shift has confronted HE institutions with new
challenges and it leads us to define the role of HE institutions as follows:
1. HE institutions have to facilitate students competence building within a certain
academic field. To do so they need to develop curricula that help students acquire
knowledge and that enable them to develop skills for using this knowledge in concrete
situations.
2. HE institutions have to facilitate the development of competencies that can be used
outside the learning context of HE institutions. To do so they need to develop
curricula that enable students to develop competencies which are transferable to
contexts other than the academic field studied.
For HE institutions to fulfil the role defined above, it is natural to look at the immediate
learning requirements which need to be taken into account when engaging in curriculum
development. Although students go to universities and business schools to learn about and
train for a specific academic profession, academic professionalism does not equal
knowledge of a theoretical discipline alone. In our view, mastery of an academic
profession requires that students acquire at least three important competencies:
(1)
(2)
(3)

Competent use of models and theories.

Competent use of research methods.
Competent analysis of empirical practice.

First, students need to be familiar with all relevant areas of the academic subject in
question. They have to know the theories, models and arguments that constitute the
relevant body of knowledge, and they have to be able to apply them in data analysis and
problem solving.
Second, they must know which research methods are appropriate when adopting
particular theories or models from an academic subject, and they should be able to use the
chosen research method to analyse data.
Third, they must be able to apply the string of theories and research methods to
investigate practice outside HE contexts in a way that is looked upon as being competent
by people in these particular contexts. Students need to be familiar with practice, they have
to know different practices, they have to be able to manage in practice and they need to
transfer their knowledge between practices.
Professionalism is a complex interplay between theories, research methods and
practice. In connection to curriculum development, students professionalism is to a large

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degree affected by the actual mix of teaching methods, study methods and technologies
used in the curriculum.
It is our belief that such learning requirements can be met with success if the
curriculum is rooted in a learning-based paradigm that takes into account the learning
process of students. When working as a university teacher responsible for curriculum
development, it is essential to have a clear conception of student learning (what it is, and
how and why it takes place). Insight into the elements of the learning process is central to
developing curricula that facilitate students development of competencies.
Contextual learning
Learning is a complex of individual and interpersonal processes influenced by both
planned and contingent factors. There are many learning theories to choose from, and
many useful traditions of learning exist that affect ways in which university teaching is
planned and carried out. We base our work with curriculum development on contextual
learning theories (Bandura, 1975; Bruner, 1996; Buch, 2000; Hermansen, 2005; Kolb,
1984; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Vygotsky, 1987; Wenger, 1998). Looking at learning in this
particular way has practical implications for the ways in which we work with curriculum
development (as will also be shown in Section Curriculum development in practicethe
BETA course, where we present the case of a course in Business Economic Theory and
Analysis (BETA) which has been developed using the paradigm of contextual learning).
Context
We see context as something of which one is a part rather than something in which one is
merely placed. Context is an order of behaviour rather than a topographic structure
(McDermott, 1999). From this view of context, we argue that the learning context changes
over time. It is never static or fixed. Different orders of behaviour constitute different
learning contexts, so to speak. We argue that the auditorium, the classroom, or the working
group of students cannot be conceived as identical learning spaces over time. Each
gathering of groups of students and teachers (and other key actors) constitutes a unique
ongoing system of social relations (Nygaard & Andersen, 2005). Curriculum developers
have to bear in mind that the learning processes of students change over time. Staffing
requirements, teaching methods, ways of examining and evaluation will be different as the
learning context changes. When neither structures nor contexts of action are given or
fixed, it is essential that students and teachers interact in a way that facilitates the
individual learning processes of the students.
Learning and its components
In general, we see learning as an embedded process, affected by the learners identity
(Bramming, 2001; Greenwood, 1994; Wenger, 1998) and social position (Lawson, 1997)
in ongoing systems of social relations (Granovetter, 1992). In our view, learning is
intersubjective and takes place between embedded learners. Learning, as such, is a social
process. The class is not just an aggregate group of students, it is a social collectivity in
which sets of arrangements, conventions and agreements govern behaviour (Greenwood,
1994). As a curriculum developer, one has to take into account the fact that students
engage in an identity project when they go to university; that they are allocated (or fight

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for) a social position within the ongoing systems of social relations in which they are
embedded, that they form social relations with other students and teachers, and that their
learning process is affected by the outcomes of these social processes and interactions.
We define learning as: the process of acquiring new personal knowledge, skills or
competencies, which can be used when meeting forthcoming challenges in life. We
distinguish between knowledge, skills and competencies for three reasons: first, we do not
want to trivialise the variety of aspects of personal abilities; second, the distinction enables
us to grasp the different types of learning that may take place within learning contexts; and
third, it makes it possible for us to discuss which pedagogical methods can be employed in
order to lead to the creation of either knowledge, skills, or competencies. Our definitions
are as follows.
Knowledge
As our research interests link the term knowledge to higher education, knowledge
becomes: perceptual experience and reasoning. Students possess knowledge
about an academic field when they are able to comprehend theoretical models and make
reasoned judgements about their use as appropriate vehicles for data analysis. Knowledge
does not represent a true image of reality, but is rather a perceptual experience of reality,
an artificial object. At this point we follow Glaserfeld (1989, p. 162) who writes about
knowledge: (a) knowledge is not passively received but actively built up by the cognizing
subject; (b) the function of cognition is adaptive and serves the organization of the
experiential world, not the discovery of ontological reality. In terms of knowledge, we
acknowledge and subscribe to the views of tacit knowledge (Nelson & Winter, 1982;
Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Polanyi, 1962, 1967) as embodied, personal and contextspecific knowledge, which is hard to formalise and communicate. Polanyi (1962) argues
that tacit knowledge is created through a process of unconscious trial and error, where
learners feel their way to success without specifically knowing how they do it. This is true
of university students who are not necessarily aware of their own knowledge (e.g. how and
why they are able to produce a particular result in a particular course). The role of higher
education is, therefore, to help students become aware of and reflexive about their use and
linking of theories, methods and practice. Like knowledge acquisition or learning,
knowledge production is embedded and acquired during social activity.
Skills
We define a skill as: the ability that has been acquired by training or experience to perform
a task or activity to produce solutions in some problem domain. For us, to acquire a skill
demands knowledge. We say that students have skills when they are able to actually
perform data analysis, with the use of theoretical models, in order to produce a solution to
a certain problem. As such, to master a certain skill requires more than knowledge.
Competencies
We define competence as: the ability to apply knowledge and skills so that the task at hand
is carried out in such a way that it meets the standard of performance required in a
particular context and that the person is looked upon by relevant actors as being
competent. Competencies are viewed as qualifications applied to solve problems in
practice. In our case, we would say that students are competent when they are able to

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perform to the standards defined by, for example, academia or business. By performance
we mean carrying out a task at hand. Learners are always competent in relation to the task
itself and the required standard of performance. Selznick (1992) calls this
institutionalization, and points to the importance of infused values beyond the mere
technical requirements. In order to be competent, students need to be able to carry out a
task so that it is completed satisfactorilyboth technically and institutionally. Considering
the demarcation between skills and competencies, we point at the role of the context. If we
take the HE institution as an example, students following a particular course can well be
skilled and competent at the same time, because the teacher evaluates the performance of
students relative to academic standards. A postgraduate student working in a business,
however, may well be skilled (able to produce a solution to a certain problem based on
theoretical models and methodological inquiry) but, nevertheless, regarded as being noncompetent, because the standard of performance required in the particular business context
is different from the standard required in the HE context. As we cannot predict the exact
business context in which our students will be employed in the future, it is relevant to say
that to be competent demands that the students are able to transfer their knowledge and
skills across contexts. It therefore makes sense, when working with curriculum
development, to distinguish between qualifications (knowledge and skills) and
competencies. Furthermore, this distinction gives us a terminology with which to analyse
aspects of curriculum development and discuss its effect on student learning.
The process of learning
So far we have presented the key terminology: context, learning, knowledge, skills, and
competencies. In this paragraph we focus on the learning process itself. Following
Hermansen (2005) we define three elements that make up the learning process: (1)
feedback and feed-forward; (2) habitusreflection; (3) toilexuberance. Learning always
occurs through an integration of these three elements and must, therefore, be analysed in
terms of these dimensions.
Feedback and feed-forward
Learners always move within the framework of past, present and future. As time goes by,
future becomes present, and present becomes past. Time enables the writing of history and
the creation of contexts and cultures in which the learner is embedded. We perceive the
future through our pre-understandings. All learning takes place as a correction or a change
of something already known to the learner. Learning is always related to preunderstandings, and the learning process is a process of creating and recreating preunderstandings for future complexity reduction.
Feed-forward is the process of imagining the future as a response to current action
and evaluating whether the envisaged situation corresponds to what actually happened.
When a person engages in any kind of action s(he) imagines what will happen in the future
and what role s(he) is going to play according to the action and the possible responses.
Hermansen (2005, p.26) writes So feed-forward is a pre-understanding or an assumption
that something specific will happen with a subsequent examination of whether what we
did to realise the idea, actually did happen. Feed-forward establishes a connection
between what has been previously done (experience) and assumptions about what may
happen in the future when one acts in a certain way. Feed-forward is a process of making
pre-understandings and it is concerned with how the world (objects, subjects, actions,

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meanings, understandings, possibilities, etc.) is connected. Feed-forward will usually be a

question of rearranging and changing perceptions in a non-radical way because the
perception of the future always will be based on the understandings of the past.
Feedback is the process where what one does reacts upon what is done or the way it
is done. Hermansen (2005, p. 25) writes: Repeated feedback can be collected in
experience. Comparison (unconscious or conscious) of different feedbacks is, however,
also the basis for choosing the best, most rewarding or suitable activity. This is the basis of
understanding learning processes. We learn from our experiences, so to speak. When we
do something to the world, it responds and we learn from the good response. We also learn
from the bad response, but do not always know what we have learnt. Feedback changes
pre-understandings and raises questions about how connections can be established in a
more meaningful way. Feedback can lead to the modification of the understanding as well
as to the reconstruction of the way the world is understood.
Together feedback and feed-forward describe the process of action and reflection that
takes place when learners move within the framework of past, present and future. Thus
learning is not only situated in linear, chronological time but also in learning time.
Feedbackfeed-forward and curriculum development
The principle of feedbackfeed-forward tells us that each student creates a subjective
meaning of a situation based on their past experiences and their expectations of the future.
This means that each individual student will not learn the same from attending the same
lecture or carrying out the same exercise be it theoretical, methodological or practical
knowledge, skills or competencies. As learning is based on feedbackfeed-forward it
requires that the curriculum is developed in such a way that individual learning is
facilitated through the pedagogical activities. The curriculum has to be flexible enough to
take into account the individual learning processes and the individual creation of meaning
of the students. One way to deal with this is to provide as much information about the
learning situation as possible. What are the learning requirements? How does the learning
situation connect to other learning situations? What are the possible outcomes of the
learning situation? Such information helps the individual student to create a subjective
meaning based on feedbackfeed-forward. Furthermore, the teacher can facilitate group
discussions in which each student has the possibility to discuss theoretical, methodological
and practical issues. Such discussion sessions require that students articulate their
subjective understandings and, by doing so, the individual learning processes of the
students are brought in focus. It is a good idea to supplement group discussions and
similar sessions with assignments that force students to be very concrete and precise in
expressing their theoretical, methodological, and practical knowledge, skills and
competencies. In this way the subjective understanding of each student has to be
negotiated within the group in order to reach a common statement of meaning, which
again puts focus on the individual learning process.
Habitusreflection
While feedbackfeed-forward regards the process of learning, habitusreflection concerns
the level of learning. The discussion about level is connected to degrees of reflection.
Habitus is unconscious learning. It is learning without knowing what is being learned
or why. Habitus learning can also be a side effect of a conscious learning process, where
only some knowledge, skills or competencies are learned unconsciously. Moreover,

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habitus learning can occur when the learner simply applies a trial and error technique until
the right result is reached. The learner then knows how to act in a similar future situation,
but does so without explicitly knowing why. It is impossible to always reflect on
everything that is done. As such, it is inevitable that a part of the learning process will be
habitualotherwise the learning process would have to start over again every time. The
learner will always try to use as little effort as possible to perform what is required, and the
more that is performed in a habitual manner, the more energy will be left for other
purposes.
Reflection is conscious learning. Reflection is said to occur when you think about
what you are learning, where you are learning, how you are learning and why you are
learning. Reflecting about what you are learning is when you are able to compare the
current input with other knowledge, skills and competencies, to create meaning in what
you are learning and find the connections with what has previously been learned.
Reflection of where is the awareness that the learning situation can influence what is
learned. The context can create space for different learning; for example, are the skills a
student learns in a laboratory different from the skills learned in an auditorium even
though the intention is to create the same skills? Reflection about how things are learned
is self-reflection; the consideration of how to create the best space for ones individual
learning. It is the process of learning how to learn. Reflections about why you are
learning are closely connected to creating meaning. You have to be able to see the
relevance of what you are learning in terms of the meaning you ascribe to your own life;
otherwise education will not create learning, except of the rote learning variety.
Habitusreflection and curriculum development
The principle of habitusreflection tells us that learning can be habitual for one student
while reflective for another student. Some are in a situation where they do not know what
they have learned (or if they have learned it), whereas others will be aware of their
learning and will be able to discuss and contextualize their learning. The curriculum
should be developed so that it facilitates reflection of habitual learning, because habitual
learning without prior reflection is unfruitful as it difficult to transfer between contexts.
Habitual learning without reflection, therefore, rarely forms the basis of competencies. On
the other hand, it is important that learning becomes habitual so the student has a
repertoire
of
actions
that
can
be
used
in
future
situations
withouttheneedforextensivereflection.Weexpectstudents tobeknowledgeableand to possess
certain skills which can be immediately utilised when analysing and solving a concrete
problem. No student will be regarded as competent in a given context if the student needs
to go through long phases of reflection before taking action.
One way to deal with the progression from reflective learning to habitual learning is to
formulate assignments that require students to work with theories and methods to either
formulate or solve problems. Repeated use of theories and methods are important when
learning habitual ways of coping with future situations. At the same time, it is important to
stress that HE institutions cannot facilitate learning that is directly applicable in every
context or future situation. This is one of the main reasons why reflective learning is so
important. Reflective learning helps students to think about what, why, how and when they
are learning, be it knowledge, skills or competencies. When developing the curriculum,
reflective learning can be facilitated through group debates, panel discussions, group
assignments and individual assignments. Again, the key purpose is to get students to
objectify and negotiate their subjective meanings. In doing so, the student is forced to

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reflect upon the learning situation and future habits can be activated with a deeper
awareness of situation, method and possible outcome.
Toilexuberance
The principle of toilexuberance comprises the general psychological principles of
learning. It captures the fuel that makes the learning processes continue and start over and
over again.
Learning through toil is when the learning situation or the syllabus gives rise to so
many problems that the learning process is slow and difficult. The learner has to mug up
in order to learn and the subject matter includes what is sometimes seen as endless
repetition.
Learning by exuberance is when experiments and enthusiasm carry the learner
through the learning process. Sometimes the learner hardly realises that he/she is in a
learning process, sometimes the learner is fully aware and reflective about the process. In
younger children, play often comprises learning by exuberance. There is little attention to
this kind of learning because the teacher does not have to intervene much in the process
and the learning process tends to follow its own course. If the teacher is not open to this
spontaneity and is unwilling to deviate from a previously planned path, the learning
process can be transformed to a toil learning process. If the learners never get a chance to
use their surplus energy, because the teacher insists, for example, on using a particular
model and refuses even to consider the ideas of the students, this will frequently result in
frustration or loss of interest.
There is thus a close connection between toil and exuberance. A learning process based
on toil can be transformed to a situation of exuberance when the feedback process changes
the way the learner understand the syllabus, and therefore gives the feeling of an
accommodative jump. Conversely, exuberance can change to toil if the available skills and
tools are not adequate to overcome a paradox, or when the context (the teacher, the
materials, the instruments, etc.) limits the ambitions and desires of the students.
Toilexuberance and curriculum development
The principle of toilexuberance tells us that students have different levels of motivation
and energy when entering into the learning situation. Some struggle through by sheer toil
while others are carried through by the energy gained from exuberance. There is no direct
relationship between the principle of toilexuberance and the level of learning (habitus
reflection). Sometimes habitus learning brings the learner to a state of exuberance because
the basis of the learning process is solid and leaves room for reflection. Sometimes habitus
learning drains student energy and reduces of the learning process to sheer toil because it
uses all the energy on boring processes of, for example, repetition. Hermansen (2005, p.
92) writes it this way: When routine has reached a certain level, it potentially provides
energy and exuberance to rise above the habitual element and in a reflective movement to
adjust . . . a change of habits is necessary when the habits no longer match the problems
they are to handle, but as there is toil connected to re-programming habitus, it naturally
calls for resistance, more or less depending on personal robustness.
In our work on curriculum development, the principle of toilexuberance tells us that
different assignments and teaching methods shift the state of toil and exuberance within
individual students. It is therefore important to plan sessions where the students can
discuss their own learning process with each other as well as with the teacher. It can be

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argued that just as feedback from other people is important in the process of meaning
creation (feedbackfeed-forward), teacher and peer feedback is also important for the
motivation and energy level of the learner. Using facilities like the intranet makes it
possible to develop a forum in which students can debate their learning processes and in
which those students who are struggling can ask for clarification and guidance from fellow
students, teachers, supervisors or coaches.
Reflective intermezzo
So what is the connection between the three principles of individual learning as formulated
by Hermansen (2005) and the components of learning and the learning requirements of HE
contexts as proposed by us? We see the principles of learning as a way of understanding
the individual learning process and, through this understanding, to be able to develop
better didactics and a learning-focused curriculum. Moreover it helps to discuss
curriculum development at a time when curriculum is situated in many space and time
contexts. The liquid modernity (Bauman, 2001) makes competencies central in the
understanding of knowledge. The learner has to be able to use qualifications in new
contexts in a way that is seen as competent. Society changes rapidly and the educational
programmes should be aware of these changes. The learner is in his/her own time, with
his/her own past (experiences) and own future (hopes and goals). The curriculum has to
take the different ways of understanding the current time and make an advantage of them.
Bauman (2003) use the term swarm to describe the social organisation of todayeach
member of the swarm can move in different directions at different speeds but the swarm as
a whole is moving the same way. The learning process is situated in time and space.
Individual learning spaces create the social context and the social relations of the learners
embedded in that context. The relation between the principles of learning, the
requirements of learning in HE and the components of learning is shown in
Fig. 1.
As it appears the learning process is a combination of three integrated cycles: (1)
feedbackfeed-forward, (2) habitusreflection and (3) toilexuberance. Whatever

Fig. 1 The individual learning process and learning requirements in the HE context

subject or learning project any student carries through in his/her life, the learning process
itself is an integration of these cycles. In management education to be a professional
student one needs to know theories, methods and practice. And one needs to possess
knowledge, skills and competencies.
We see the understanding of the individual learning process as the way to (re)think the
content of the learning space. How theories, methods and practices are connected to
knowledge, skills and competencies depend on the swarm of directions in time (using a
mix of experiences and notions of the future), of reflection levels and of different
velocities. In curriculum development, it is necessary to think about these different
aspects: first and foremost, are students moving from different starting points? Are they
moving in different directions? Are they moving slowly? Are they moving quickly?
Second, students need to learn to act (and react) in different ways in order to learn how to

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learn. Sometimes the learner needs to examine his experiences to solve a problem;
sometimes he needs to examine his pre-understandings to understand how to solve a
problem; sometimes he is working with another learner who is doing something different.
Taken together, the different individual learning processes create the learning space in
which the teacher has to build up scenarios that give students the opportunity to learn. In
the next section, we describe the curriculum of a Bachelors degree course at Copenhagen
Business School (CBS) which has been developed to focus on the learning process of the
students.

Curriculum development in practicethe BETA course

Our case is the curriculum development of a 2-year course in Business Economic Theory
and Analysis in a new Bachelors programme in Business Administration and
Organisational Communication (COM) which started in 2002 at Copenhagen Business
School (CBS). The first cohort of Bachelors graduated in 2005.
We started the curriculum development of the BETA course in the spring of 2001
almost 1 years before it was due to start. The question for us was: how do we best
develop a curriculum which integrates theories, methods and practice
and which, at the same time, enhances the professional development of
students knowledge, skills and competencies? We formulated some important
guidelines for our work:
1. The BETA course will be grounded in ongoing research from the teachers/ researchers
involved in developing and teaching courses.
2. The BETA course curriculum will include current business practices.
3. BETA students must take responsibility for and organise a part of their own
curriculum.
4. BETA students must be able to apply theories, work methodically, reflect critically
and develop personal and interpersonal competencies.
5. The BETA course is based on a pedagogy that is orientated towards practice.
These guidelines derived from view on contextual learning and from the requirements
of learning at HE institutions (presented in Fig. 1). It made us think about the BETA course
in terms of academic themes and learning processes rather than the syllabus and teaching.
We developed five modules (one for each semester of the BETA course running from 1st
to 5th semester of the COM study programme). The structure of the BETA course and the
COM education is shown in Table 1.
COM is a full-time study programme and all courses take place at the Copenhagen
Business School. In each semester students follow four to five courses simultaneously. The
total workload of the BETA course is 31 ECTS: ECTS stands for the European Credit
Transfer and Accumulation System, which is a studentcentred system based on the student
workload required to achieve the objectives of a study programme. ECTS is devised in
such a way that 60 credits measure the workload of a full-time student during an academic
year. The student workload of a full-time study programme in Europe amounts, in most
cases, to around 1,500 1,800 h per year. At CBS the full-time study workload is set to
1,800 h per year, which means that one ECTS equals 30 student working hours. In the
Danish system this gives approximately 40 h of study per week.
The BETA course amounts to 930 student working hours over five semesters, of which
163 are face-to-face hours in the classroom. The remaining work hours are to be spent by

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the student on individual or group work within the academic domain of the BETA course.
We will not go through all the course modules here, but will concentrate on the first
module (three ECTS) and the second module (six ECTS). We can say, though, that there is
one course coordinator responsible for the entire BETA course, and the same group of
teachers is involved on all five semesters, so the other three modules follow the same
pedagogical model as that described below. Module onefirst semester
Instead of thinking only in terms of lectures and exercises, we planned the BETA course
with different pedagogical activities in our repertoire. Thus, the BETA course starts with a
mini-conference. The mini-conference runs over two weeks and represents the cornerstone
of the BETA course when it comes down to integrating theories, methods and practice.
The structure of the mini-conference is shown in Fig. 2.
We use the intranet facility named SiteScape Forum for online communication, file
sharing, and academic debate within the group of administrators, teachers and students. We
have created a special BETA portal. This is a combined learning approach, where our
traditional face-to-face interaction during the face-to-face hours in the classroom is
supplemented by face-to-interface interaction on an intranet. We have synchronous
interaction in the classroom and asynchronous interaction in a dedicated on-line
community on the intranet. Each morning at 5 a.m. the intranet automatically sends an email in digest-format containing new headlines and relevant links to all new activities to
all students. That is a way of continuously reminding the students of the BETA course and
encouraging them to develop the habit of visiting the BETA portal each day.
We start our course in November. During October we upload a call for conference
papers for the mini-conference explaining the setup and the goals of the conference, as
well as the requirements put on students in our SiteScape Forum. We

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ECTS,
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Fig. 2 Module onethe mini-conference

also upload a 36 page manual explaining in detail how the BETA course is developed, why
it has been developed in this way, what we expect of students, and guidelines for how they
may or may not plan their own study process while attending the BETA course. We also
describe the learning goals as well as the pedagogy behind the BETA course. The manual
and the conference call provide a way to help students in their feed-forward processes
and a way for them to tune into the BETA course. We also upload the reading list for the
course and students have to buy, loan or download the appropriate titles
themselves. The
Totalworkload30ECTS,
preparation for the miniconference requires individual work. It is traditional student
preparation such as reading, writing and contributing in debates and discussions on the
BETA portal. The individual work is mostly theory-driven and is assigned in order to
develop individual knowledge and skills.
On the first day of the mini-conference two managing directors present the key
challenges in business economics facing their companies. Their presentations are followed
by a Q&A session with the MDs. Before the mini-conference begins students upload their
questions for this session to the BETA portal. This is a demand made on students in order
to facilitate their reading of academic literature in which theories on business economics
are presented, to make them read the conference call, to encourage them to visit the
homepages of the companies and read the annual reports of the companies. The students
are expected to work together in groups of four to six in order to integrate theories and
practice, which means that they must be able to argue for and reflect upon their own
interpretations of both theories and practice.
The Q&A session itself is recorded on MP3 and uploaded on the BETA portal for the
students to use in their forthcoming analysis of the companies and their challenges. Over
the next 34 days the students work intensively in groups on their analysis, trying to find
ways in which the companies can overcome their challenges.

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Such group work is assigned to motivate students to share their knowledge and
demonstrate their skills and competencies to each other. Some of the miniconferences
host a panel and others host a workshop. Our first mini-conference hosts a workshopan
entire day where students discuss their analyses of the challenges facing the companies
with each otherand with their teachers who take the role of supervisors and coaches.
Based on the knowledge acquired from reading and discussing the academic
literature, students train their analytical skills when they have to discuss their analysis
with each other and with the teachers, and their writing skills when they have to write a
five-page report where they explicitly use the acquired academic terminology to analyse
the challenges of the companies.
Students upload their final reports to the BETA portal, and will either fail (and,
therefore, have to resubmit) or pass the test. Teachers evaluate the reports based on the
learning requirements in the HE context; that is, whether the reports demonstrate a
competent use of models and theories, a competent use of research methods,
and a competent analysis of empirical practice. The teachers each nominate two
reports as the best reports and, from this pool of nominees, two winners are chosen. The
following week the winning groups have to present their reports in a face-toface situation
with the MDs, in front of the entire class. The MDs evaluate the presentations in terms of
the way in which they meet the standards of performance required in their business
contexts and, as such, whether students are seen as competent outside the academic
context. Both teachers evaluations and the MDs evaluations provide important
feedback to the students who are in the process of learning how to master a new
academic field. Feedback from other people helps the student to create a subjective
meaning of a situation based on their past experiences and their expectation of the future,
and thereby helps them to be able to strengthen their own feedback processes.
The first time the students meet our teachers they are facilitators of a miniconference
with representatives from one or two companies. It makes an enormous impact on new
Bachelor students when the first people they meet in the Business Economics class are two
MDs asking them to help them solve problems and overcome real life challenges. And the
competitive elementwinning one of the two slots where you can present your report to
the MDs is a motivating factor as well. We try to motivate students and facilitate their
development of knowledge, skills and competencies throughout the BETA course by
varying the pedagogical tools used.
Module twosecond semester
Again we use a variety of pedagogical tools on the second semester of the BETA course.
We have a opening lecture followed by a workshop, then three lectures each followed by a
discussion (note the 3), then a mini-conference (this one with a panel session instead of a
workshop), a lecture followed by a discussion, three lectures on management tools (two of
them with time for discussions) and the semester ends with a 72-h case exam (Fig. 3).
In this, as well as the following semesters, the keyword is variation. The central element
is the blended learning approach, where the BETA portal is used as the platform for
asynchronous communication between students, between students and teachers, between
students and administration. Throughout module two we have a

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Fig. 3 Module twosecond semester

string of individual e-learning assignments which have to be solved individually by the

students and uploaded to the BETA portal. The assignments pose both theoretical and
methodological questions and require that students consider the implications of theoretical
perspectives for business practice. The e-learning assignments also serve as an input to
teachers preparation of the forthcoming class-based activity.
On the BETA course our lectures are not traditional lectures where teachers lecture
from the textbook. The overall principle is not to waste students time by repeating
information that they have already acquired from the textbooks and, possibly, transformed
into knowledge. Lectures are, therefore, based on the premise that all students have
completed their individual work before they attend the lecture, so the teacher does not
repeat what is in the textbook. Instead the teacher is expected to put the central themes of
business economics into perspective by giving concrete examples on how theory and
practice is connected and then engage students in a debate based on their readings prior to
the lecture. The debate may take its starting point in the uploaded e-learning assignments,
in a real life situation, or in issues taken from the textbook. The thematic debate helps
students perceive and experience the information they have acquired and transform it into
reasoning.
Each lecture is followed by a discussion session where the e-learning assignments, the
themes of the lecture, and the theoretical and methodological issues in the literature are
discussed between teacher and students.
Module two also has an individual paper review, where students chose an academic
paper (book chapter, journal article, research report), and write a review of that. We think
that in order to be a qualified reader of academic literature, it is important that students try
to deconstruct the arguments and compositions of such texts which is why we include the
review session. Each student uploads his/her paper review to the BETA portal, where
everyone can see all the reviews. They then choose a review written by another student

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and write an individual critique of that text. Teachers pass or fail both the review and the
review critique of each student. In practice, teachers download the documents, write their
comments into the documents, and upload the marked versions to the BETA portal. In this
way each student gets immediate feedback from another student (or several students if
more than one student chooses to give an individual critique of their review) as well as
from the teacher. Feedback is an important mechanism in the learning process of
students, and the academic online debates between students help them in their forthcoming
group activities.
The centre of module two is another mini-conference, based on the same principles as
the mini-conference in module one. There is one important difference, though, which is
that the workshop is changed to a panel session. Here six to eight representatives from
different companies participate in a 4-h Q&A session, where groups of students interview
them about themes central to the case company which has presented their challenges on
the first day of the conference. Each group of students gets 30 min with a company
representative before they move onto the next company representative, and so on. In this
way students are required to explain the core themes and challenges of the case company
to each company representative, and to interview the company representative about similar
themes and challenges they have experienced in their companies. Afterwards, the group of
students has to be able to translate the input from the series of interviews into usable input
for their analysis of the case company. This is a format that requires knowledge of
theories and methodology. It requires methodological skills to master such
sessions in a competent way, and it requires competent understanding of the relation
between theory and practice to be able to master a string of meaningful dialogues with
six to eight representatives from different companies over a 4-h session. Again, we train
students in explicit coupling of theory and practice, in a way that requires reflection
and the activity is organised so that they get immediate feedback from company
representatives. Such panel sessions (as seems to be the case with all our miniconferences
where practitioners are involved) produce a state of exuberance in most students.
Module two ends with three sessions on management tools where students are
presented with concrete tools that can be used in a normative way when managing
companies. The tools we introduce vary from year to year but usually fall into the
categories of HRM tools, accounting tools, and communication tools. We include tools to
help students develop theoretical and methodological skills in addition to their
theoretical and methodological knowledge. We have asked business practitioners
and key researchers to participate in these sessions to demonstrate how they use the tools
in their companies or in current research.
We end module two with a 72-h case exam, where groups of students write a 15-page
report based on their analysis of a large and complex case study. We gather approximately
250300 pages of information about a company and its business relations and ask the
group of students to act as a consultancy company. The assignment is to make a
theoretically based and methodologically sound analysis of the challenges facing
the company and to provide the company with a recommendation for future business. We
evaluate the reports based on the requirements we have formulated for students mastery of
an academic profession. Does a report demonstrate: (1) a competent use of models and
theories? (2) a competent use of research methods? and 3) a competent analysis of
empirical practice? If it fulfils these three criteria it will pass, otherwise it will fail.
Although the reports are written by groups of students, we arrange oral exams where
students defend their report and its conclusions individually. We do this in order to be able
to give a fair evaluation of each students knowledge, skills, and competencies. We

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evaluate knowledge of theories and methodologies, we evaluate their skills in a discussion

about their choice of methodology employed in the analysis, and we evaluate their
competencies within the academic field as an overall evaluation of their written report and
oral performance.

Conclusion
In this article, we have shown how curriculum development and students learning
processes are closely related. We have argued that the development of a learningcentred
education has become increasingly important as the tasks, roles and identities of the
modern worker have changed with the introduction of new technologies and the
establishment of the knowledge economy. We have presented the case of the BETA course
in the COM study programme at CBS, which is rooted in a contextual learning paradigm
centred on the learning processes of the students. Our pedagogical activities are planned
within the framework of contextual learning, where we see the learning process as an
integration of feedback and feed-forward, habitus reflection, and toil
exuberance. Our aim is to facilitate the students development of knowledge, skills,
and competencies within the framework of academic professionalism which requires:
(1) a competent use of models and theories, (2) a competent use of
research methods and (3) a competent analysis of empirical practice.
We have endeavoured to explain and describe how and why we developed an overall
structure and a variety of underlying synchronous and asynchronous activities in order to
put an explicit focus on different forms of student learning at different points in time.

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