Methodology toolkit for management educators

Many authors agree that our understanding of how students learn using business simulations is relatively limited. The quest to understand student learning, specifically in the African context, becomes more important in order to leverage the benefits that simulations hold for developing the skills needed by graduates in the fourth industrial revolution. This raised an interesting question regarding the best methodologies within the educator's toolkit to employ in studying the learning process and impact of simulation based courses. This conceptual paper outlines the methodological approaches used in a carefully selected case study, being a longitudinal, dual institution research project which incorporated a unique combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative methodological blend of the research project included participative action research, reflective journals of educators, weekly student reflections and focus groups. Student performance during the simulation, marks, survey data and assurance of learning reports provide a quantitative view. The case study further highlights specific ethical challenges that were addressed; firstly, the researchers kept track of student responses whilst observing the principles of informed consent, over multiple data points. Secondly, the authors endeavoured not to burden respondents with excessive requirements but rather worked on ensuring synergy between data collected and learning objectives. This paper proposes a conceptual model outlining a methodological mix to research student learning in order to address one of the most common critiques levelled at management education literature, being the lack of long-term, in-depth and rigorous study of student learning.