Professor Mark Julien is being recognized for his innovation in the classroom.
The professor from Brock University’s Goodman School of Business is the recipient of a new teaching award from the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society (OBTS). The Mid-Career Distinguished Educator award recognizes mid-career management educators who have demonstrated innovative teaching approaches, service to the society and a positive contribution to the area of teaching research.
Julien, who teaches in the Organizational Behaviour, Human Resources, Entrepreneurship and Ethics department, is passionate about teaching his students in a way that will engage and excite them.
He uses various strategies to engage students in his human resource management and labour relations courses.
Professor Mark Julien
For example, when teaching labour history, Julien assigns a historical event to his students who are tasked with imagining every stakeholder involved, along with their reactions and perceptions. They are then asked to carefully think of how the situation would be affected by the use of social media, had it been invented at the time. Students meticulously script hypothetical social media conversations between the stakeholders at play to help them explain the situation’s parallels to today. For example, one historical event (The Triangle Shirt Waist Fire in New York) has parallels to the recent factory fires in Bangladesh.
Having taught for 20 years, Julien is known for making good use of technology in the classroom, sometimes through the use of text-to-video web platforms to allow students to easily make creative videos to help them present a topic.
“I try to leverage new technology as much as possible in my classes. I want to bring HR concepts to life, get people excited about the material and unleash their creativity,” he says.
“This type of immersive experience leads to an in-depth understanding of the material, which is a lot more fun than memorization and it results in better learning.”
In addition to his engaging teaching style and use of innovative teaching strategies, Julien has actively contributed to the OBTS by serving as a reviewer for its annual conference and playing a key role in organizing the 2012 conference held at Brock University.
A published and well-esteemed researcher on this topic, Julien has presented at many conferences and had his work published in the Journal of Management Education on his use of xtranormal.com, a text-to-video web platform, in his classes.
“I am extremely humbled to receive this award and to be recognized by people who are also passionate about teaching,” he says.
