Information Systems for Business -- Interview with France Belanger

France Belanger Discusses “Information Systems for Business: An Experiential Approach” 

What is an “Experiential Approach”? 

The idea is to get the students to work on something and then to present the material and talk about it. So. Example: we have a chapter about privacy. We talk about the principles you would find in a privacy policy. The exercise I love to do is give them a scenario and have them develop their own privacy policy. So when they come to class, talking about the principles is [*snaps*] a piece of cake. They know those principles because they just had to make decisions about that. So that is the kind of environment I like to do.

How does it work using your book in your class?

With the book, I would use maybe 15 slides per class maximum. I would have lots of discussion, and I embedded cases. And so it's about getting the students to be participants in the learning. And it takes time. But I have to say, after I started doing experiential learning, my student evals have always been way up there, even if I challenge them. The idea is for them to be intrigued by the topic through the experiential part, so that then you can talk about it and go further.