NEWS & INSIGHT
DIGITAL THOUGHT
SPARKING CREATIVITY WITH MUSEUM ARTEFACTS COUNTRY: Australia SCHOOL: University of Sydney Business School A bronze thumb from an ancient Greek statue, a Massim Ancestor Figure, and a helmet made from dried pufferfish skin from Kiribati are among the museum objects being used to spark creative thinking at the University of Sydney Business School. ‘Creativity is increasingly recognised as an important aspect of business education. More and more companies require staff to look at existing problems in different ways, to find novel alternatives,’ said Dewa Wardak, a Lecturer in Educational Development at the School. Wardak is part of the School’s Co-Design team that has collaborated with programme coordinators on ‘Analytic and Creative Mindsets’ – a core unit in the School’s Master of Commerce. In the unit, students work collaboratively to develop and present a narrative that connects five seemingly disconnected artworks, artefacts and specimens from the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum. ‘The unit was designed to teach postgraduate business students about creativity and analytics, and to emphasise that both mindsets are complementary and necessary graduate attributes,’ writes Wardak, together with colleagues from the University of Sydney Business School in a recently published paper in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education . It was Covid-19 that led the team to introduce this object-based learning (OBL) as they sought for methods that would be effective in a blended format at a time when more than 70% of students were enrolled remotely due to the closure of Australia’s borders. As the paper describes: ‘Engaging in digital OBL has benefits, for example digital objects have links to contextual information, which can stimulate thinking on related topics, offer the potential for collaboration of larger numbers of students with the same objects in real time.’ The Chau Chak Wing Museum opened at the university in 2020. The School’s Co-Design team, meanwhile, is an interdisciplinary group looking to find new pedagogical approaches to business education that can transform the student learning experience. / Tim Banerjee Dhoul (TBD)
FOR FOOD COUNTRY: Spain SCHOOL: Esade Business School
Food wastage is a growing problem in Europe, even at a time when many families lack sufficient access to food. It is estimated that approximately 20% of food is thrown out and wasted, while 25% of households experience some degree of food-insecurity. This is the rationale behind food banks. Applications to European banks for food banks have increased by 30% during the pandemic, yet these vital resources are not being run as efficiently as they could be, according to a new report from Esade Business School (Esade). The report found that these inefficiencies could be fixed by the increased use of digitalisation. It analyses 12 successful social initiatives from across the world which have already used digital technology to offer recommendations on how food banks could increase their effectiveness. Entitled From warehouses to platforms: reinventing food banks through the lens of the digital economy , the report was produced for the School’s Institute for Social Innovation by Liliana Arroyo and David Murillo, an Associate Researcher and Associate Professor at Esade, respectively. The researchers identified current trends in the fight to eradicate food waste and hunger. One of these is to change the narrative around food banks from one associated with charity to one centred around the ideas of mutual aid and community sharing. Recommendations from the report, meanwhile, focused on the need for food banks to have better access to digital technology. Specific models suggested include the use of mobile apps to connect food suppliers with charities and e-commerce platforms to sell food that is about to go out of date, or which is imperfect (for example, a misshapen carrot) at discounted prices. / Ellen Buchan (EB)
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