????AFTER serving as dean and teaching at various well-known business schools all around the world, Prof. Aidan Kelly is now based in China and is employed by Shenzhen University as the dean of the Shenzhen International Business School. ????With rich experience teaching in business schools, Prof. Kelly intends to bring cutting-edge teaching methodologies in addition to conventional ways of teaching to students. ????“We want to go beyond the conventional content of business education because nowadays the new way of thinking in modern business schools is not to teach people in a traditional way like case studies but with practical, real-world projects,” said Kelly. ????Kelly has been a professor at various business schools and was the dean of University College Dublin Business School for six years. ????The dean wants to incorporate more practical learning opportunities for business students because he thinks the dynamic business and financial atmosphere of Shenzhen provides a good environment for student learning. ????“We are thinking of partnering with local companies to provide internship opportunities for our students during summer holidays instead of assigning a final project because such opportunities may help the students find jobs,” said Kelly. ????Kelly said the school would incorporate the idea of learning by doing into some of the courses such as marketing, strategy or finance classes by placing the students in companies for hands-on experience. ????Another thing the dean wants for the students at Shenzhen International Business School is small-class teaching methods. “For business courses or projects in real life, team spirit is fundamental and we want our students to remain in small groups and learn to negotiate and work with others as a team,” said Kelly. ????The dean said all the seats in the school’s lecture rooms are tiered and rounded so that everyone can face each other to better facilitate discussions. ????Having worked at many business schools in Europe, Australia, the U.S. and China, Kelly found that Chinese students are more dependent on each other when studying at universities while Western students are much more independent. ????“Teamwork is essential when doing business, so some Western business schools are actually training students to be more dependent on the group like Asian students and achieve their goals by working together,” said Prof. Kelly, who has been a professor at HKUST, Wuhan University, Xiamen University and the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai. ????“On Chinese campuses, I see students doing everything in a group, which is a totally different situation from Western campuses where you hardly see any student being close to one another,” said Kelly. “So we would like to train our business students to be independent in thinking while working closely with their partners.”(SD News) | 