Patricia Meglich

Marketing and Management

Fifth Innovative Teaching in HRIR Conference

The conference consisted of two days of pedagogical sessions as well as integration with a Human Resource professional conference on Friday. A major issue highlighted by the keynote address was the fractured nature of HR education. Practitioners are trained in a variety of disciplines; such as Business Administration, I/O Psychology, Economics, and Industrial Relations. This results in uneven preparation of students and unclear standards for entrance into the profession. There was an active discussion on whether or not professional certification (PHR, SPHR) should be a requirement for entrance into the field. Of course, no conclusion was reached on that issue but it helps to inform our own curriculum revision here at UNO.

As there were typically three concurrent sessions at the conference, I chose those sessions that offered either new teaching techniques or ideas for course and curriculum development. I attended an interesting session on teaching information technology, specifically Human Resource Information Systems courses and discovered that this is a course most universities struggle with due to a lack of technical resources (software and database) and a dearth of published materials on the subject. It prompted me to think that perhaps a cross-disciplinary course could be developed in which MIS students build a database using human resource management students as the “client”. The database could then be used for courses in the future. I took advantage of the HR professional conference and attended a session on HR analytics. This was extremely valuable for me to recognize that students in the HR field need to have a better understanding of statistics and research methods.

SHRM and a panel of experts presented the curriculum research and course templates. The presenters stressed the need for HR education to include components of both science (from theory and research) and art (internships and practical experience) in preparing students for careers. There was a strong emphasis on the need for students to develop business acumen, collaborative skills, project management, and coaching skills in addition to the HR body of knowledge.

Several sessions included presentations on the use of service learning, HR Games, in-class debates, and case competitions to enhance the classroom experience. I picked up a number of ideas that I plan to introduce into my fall course. For instance, I plan to have the students create a “You Tube” type video on interviewing that can be posted on-line and used to demonstrate positive and negative interview behaviors. I hope to draft several HR professionals to evaluate or judge the videos and incorporate their evaluations into the course grades. Alternatively, I might ask several HR professionals to present a current situation in their organizations that the students could work on as a competitive case. Student groups would be challenged to present solutions with the best solution being adopted by the organization. I also found presentations on incorporating a capstone course for HR majors to be very helpful. UNO’s current curriculum does not include such a course and I believe it would provide an opportunity to integrate the full spectrum of human resource coursework in a systematic fashion. The course could also be used to prepare students for the PHR certification exam upon graduation.

Additional topics of discussion were: using advisory boards and involving alumni to maintain connections with the greater community. These are excellent techniques to keep UNO on the minds of Omaha business leaders as well as alumni

Attachment:

The conference agenda is attached for anyone interested in seeing the scope of subjects covered.

Additional Information/Resources (pdf)

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