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Conclusion Our campus collaboration has been successful, producing a highquality product while simultaneously affording students the opportunity to collaborate with faculty and Printing Services personnel to create high-quality documents, assisting art and technical communication students to build their portfolios, and offering students a way to gain recognition for their work. References
Burnett, R. E. (2006). Technical communication. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth. Drucker, P. F. (1959). Landmarks of tomorrow. New York: Harper. Kostelnick, C., & Roberts, D. D. (1998). Designing visual language: Strategies for professional communicators. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Lee S. Tesdell teaches in the technical communication program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. His current project is to organize an international online learning consortium linking instructors and students around the world. Address correspondence to Lee S. Tesdell, 230 Armstrong Hall, Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN 56001; email: lee.tesdell@mnsu.edu.

BIZBLOCK: A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY TEACHING AND LEARNING EXPERIENCE Mary Y. Bowers Christopher M. Scherpereel
Northern Arizona University
DOI: 10.1177/1080569908317083

UNIVERSITY BUSINESS EDUCATION is often criticized for not meeting the needs of its stakeholders: students, graduates, and the business community. Such criticism stems from evidence that business education fails to deliver the cross-disciplinary learning required to build essential business knowledge and competencies. To better serve business school stakeholders, Northern Arizona Universitys W. A. Franke College of Business (FCB) developed a course called BizBlock. BizBlock integrates core undergraduate business content into a crossdisciplinary learning experience.

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Traditional business school curriculum is designed to functionally train individuals who will fit into vertical organizations. Course content focuses on specialized disciplines that provide students with a thorough grounding in their respective disciplines. This focus results in a silo mentality: Students become technically proficient within their discipline but never learn to effectively share and integrate discipline-specific knowledge. Although businesses express the need for change in pedagogy, business schools, especially at the undergraduate level, continue to deliver the core body of knowledge compartmentalized by discipline. BizBlock Overview In the fall of 2000, the FCB recognized the need for change and developed a cross-disciplinary course called BizBlock. Although the course has evolved considerably during its 7-year history, the concept of meeting stakeholder needs has remained the primary driver for curricular design and implementation. The BizBlock design mandate was simple in theory: Take the required, core 3-credit-hour undergraduate courses in management, marketing, and business communications and integrate the material for delivery in a single 9-credit-hour course block. The key directive of this mandate was to integrate the three core courses, not just deliver the disciplinespecific content of the three courses sequentially. Students in BizBlock are organized in teams of five to seven, depending on class size. Student teams are presented with the problem of identifying a consumer need and developing a business plan that fills that need. Lectures, assignments, exams, and activities are designed to motivate students to develop, improve, and augment their understanding of their plan. The resulting business plans are developed and revised throughout the semester-long course. Before submitting the finished plan for grading, students add details, reinforce concepts, and make corrections to drafts. They then present the plan to the class and faculty teaching team four times throughout the semester to gather extensive feedback and improve delivery. Final plans are presented in a competitive format before a panel of three to five venture capitalists, which provides outside validation of the students work. The team judged by

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the venture capitalist panel to be most deserving of funding is declared the winning team and often given the opportunity to revise the plan for organized undergraduate business plan competitions. BizBlock is facilitated by a team of three faculty instructors representing the three disciplines included in the course. The course meets twice a week, in four half-hour time blocks. Each instructor issues a grade for the equivalent of 3 credit hours; thus, students will receive three grades on their transcript, representing each of the three discipline courses included in BizBlock. Each instructor grades integrated assignments independently, and students often receive different grades on the same assignment that reflect their ability to apply discipline-specific knowledge in a cross-disciplinary context. Teaching methodology includes facilitated discussions, breakout sessions, guest speakers, and a limited number of interactive lectures. The three faculty members remain in the classroom for the entire class session to participate in discussions and encourage class participation; instructors allocate lecture time based on what topics or information the students need to complete the next section of the business plan. Planning sessions occur before every class to distribute lecture time. The faculty team also meets with individual students or teams in cross-disciplinary consulting sessions. The biggest hurdle in the development of BizBlock was faculty perceptions of what basic course concepts from each discipline should be included in the final course design. Faculty are trained to become the classic sage on the stage, believing that each element of content within their discipline is critical to student success. Overcoming this hurdle required BizBlock faculty who were willing to challenge the traditional teaching paradigm and embrace newer methods, such as team teaching and cross-disciplinary integration. The Relationship Between Cross-Disciplinary Teaching and Integration To be successful, a cross-disciplinary course must be integrated on three levels: the primary assessment outcome (in BizBlock, this outcome would be the professional business plan and presentation), lectures, and the syllabus. The cross-disciplinary objective cannot be effectively achieved by integrating only one or even two of these

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components. Such extensive integration requires commitment and shared vision on the part of the faculty. It also requires the faculty to constantly plan and then be flexible enough to change the plan sometimes minutes before a class. In addition, cross-disciplinary teaching requires faculty who are knowledgeable, or at least comfortably familiar with, the other course disciplines, to provide consistent guidance for student learning.
Integrating the Assessment Outcome

As stated earlier, cross-disciplinary courses are not stand-alone classes taught sequentially but rather discipline-specific courses delivered in an overlapping or overarching manner. The first step in developing a cross-disciplinary course is to find an assessment outcome or primary student assignment that can only be completed using the topical material from each of the classes included in the cross-disciplinary course. In the first iteration of BizBlock, this assessment outcome was the actual formation of a business. After two semesters, faculty decided this goal was too complex and difficult for undergraduate students to complete in 16 weeks. The outcome assessment was changed to a business plan, and this approach has evolved and been enhanced during the past 7 years. Students complete the business plan in sections called drafts. Each draft is due and submitted after class discussion of relevant topical material. Because the plan is written by student teams, each team submits three identical drafts, and each BizBlock faculty member then reads and assesses the draft based on his or her discipline-specific perspective. The marketing faculty member comments on the marketing content, the management faculty member comments on management content, and the business communication faculty member edits the draft for grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and clarity. These drafts are returned to the student teams for further revision. After all the drafts have been through this process, they are combined to create the final business plan. However, teams first submit the completed plan to the business communication instructor, for one final edit. The turnaround time on this draft is usually 3 days, so the teams can make any necessary revisions before submitting the final plan.

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Integrating Lectures

Students write and submit drafts after relevant material has been introduced and discussed in class. For example, before the market and industry analysis draft is due, students will have learned about performing a SWOT analysis (management), conducting market research (marketing), and referencing source material (business communication). Although it may not always be the outcome, the goal is for each faculty member to explain material that dovetails into the other discipline lectures or is necessary for the next assignment.
Integrating Syllabi

As every educator knows, creating and modifying a syllabus can be a time-consuming, complex task. This task becomes even more daunting when one syllabus is actually a combination of three. However, because the students first real introduction of BizBlock is through the syllabus, it must reflect the cross-disciplinary nature of the class. By presenting one integrated syllabus the first day of class, students immediately begin to understand and appreciate how crossdisciplinary teaching and learning occur. Such integration requires that faculty enforce the same classroom policies and procedures and adhere to the class assignment and activities schedule presented in the syllabus. A faculty member who changes the syllabus on a regular basis without consulting the other instructors on the team confuses the students and, more important, models ineffective team behavior. Conclusion Many business programs have recognized the need to respond to their stakeholders challenge to more effectively develop essential business knowledge and competencies. Curricular redesign efforts have resulted in courses such as BizBlock that achieve greater integration across disciplines. By stretching functional boundaries, cross-discipline integration efforts appear to better prepare students for work in decentralized organizations. In addition, these courses give faculty a new appreciation for the challenges of preparing students to effectively function in a complex, interdisciplinary work environment.

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Mary Y. Bowers is a senior lecturer in management in the W. A. Franke College of Business at Northern Arizona University. She received her MBA from the University of Toledo and teaches courses in business communications and organizational behavior. Her research interests include gender communication, team teaching, and group dynamics. Address correspondence to Mary Bowers, W. A. Franke College of Business, Northern Arizona University, PO Box 15066, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5066; email: Mary.Bowers@nau.edu. Christopher M. Scherpereel is an associate professor of management at Northern Arizona University. He holds degrees from Notre Dame, Georgia Institute of Technology, and New York University and received his PhD in industrial engineering and management science from Northwestern University. His research interests include decision-making analysis, real options, entrepreneurship, simulation, and strategy. Address correspondence to Chris Scherpereel, Northern Arizona University, W. A. Franke College of Business, PO Box 15066, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5066; email: chris.scherpereel@nau.edu.

THE VALUE OF STEPPING OUTSIDE YOUR NORMAL ROLE: LESSONS LEARNED FROM SERVING ON CROSS-DISCIPLINARY TEAMS Kathleen Vance
British Columbia Institute of Technology
DOI: 10.1177/1080569908317083

FOR MY ENTIRE CAREER at my technical institute, I have been working with faculty in other departments to acquire in-depth knowledge of the communication tasks and attitudes that will be expected of my students in their future workplaces so that I can teach them the strategies and principles of business communication most likely to guarantee success. I have worked with, among others, faculty in financial management (Vance & Fitzpatrick, 1994), in occupational health nursing, and, most recently, in mining and in my institutes Learning and Teaching Centre (LTC) to develop an Internet workspace for students to use to complete their graduation projects. This most recent cross-disciplinary work has reinforced earlier lessons and brought home new ones on how we, as communication faculty, can best benefit from our cross-disciplinary experiences.