An evaluation of the challenges MBA students encounter in acquiring and applying threshold concepts in Economics

An Economics Network funded project, 2006-7

Project leaders: Dr Keith Gray, Ms Peri Yavash
Contacts: k.gray@coventry.ac.uk, p.yavash@coventry.ac.uk

The main purpose of this project is to enhance the acquisition and the application of threshold concepts in Economics by non-specialist postgraduate students. It is recognised that one aspect of threshold concepts is their troublesome nature (Meyer and Land, 2003). However, they may pose additional challenges for postgraduate students with a non-Economics background, but with commercial experience.

The project has a series of related objectives. These are to:

• Evaluate MBA student's perception of the role and usefulness of economics to management decision making and evaluate how this changes through the implementation of embedding strategies
• Examine the implications of the research findings for the wider postgraduate community within the Business Faculty where students also take a compulsory diet of economics, e.g. MA Financial Management.
• Assess the implications for MBA course design, innovation and resourcing.
• Extend the existing FDTL5 project on Threshold concepts (of which Coventry is a partner) by examining the key differences between the experiences of undergraduate and postgraduate students in acquiring and applying threshold concepts in economics

Output: Powerpoint Presentation from DEE 2007 conference
Output: Project Final Report (Word document)