The following post is from Marios Kremantzis who‘s BILT Associate role is on the theme of designing active learning sessions.
I am thrilled to join the BILT team of “designing active learning sessions” Associates over the coming academic year. Research has found that active learning can foster collaboration and student-centred teaching, leading to a gradual improvement in student engagement. It can also attain more effective, gratifying, and memorable learning outcomes.
I have been a Lecturer in Business Analytics and a member of the Postgraduate Tutor Team at the UoB School of Management since May 2021. I hold a PhD in Management Science and Decision Analytics with a specialisation in Network Data Envelopment Analysis from the University of Southampton. I also hold an MSc in Business Analytics (Lancaster University) and a BSc in Business Administration (University of Macedonia).
My main research interests lie in the fields of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), efficiency measurement, and multi-criteria decision analysis. I have gained substantial experience in building and applying mathematical programming models to solve real-world problems and make well-argued decisions. I am competent to evaluate the performance of production and operations systems with network (series, parallel, hierarchical, dynamic, assembly, disassembly) structures under the DEA technique. Thanks to various cross-disciplinary research collaborations, my work has already been published in prestigious journals such as the Expert Systems with Applications and the RAIRO-Operations Research. Furthermore, I am a member of the Operational Research Society and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I have been nominated for 2022’s Bristol Teaching Awards in the categories: “Inspiring and Innovative Teaching Award – Individual” and “Outstanding Personal Tutoring Award – Individual”. Previously, the University of Southampton awarded me (Doctoral College Director’s Award 2021) in recognition of my exceptional contribution to teaching and learning in both physical and online environments.
I have always been curious in discussing, highlighting, and developing effective and contemporary practices related to pedagogy, teaching, and learning Operational Research and Business Analytics within the Higher Education sector. I have been particularly interested in exploring, in collaboration with other colleagues inside and outside UoB, topics such as the taxonomy in a Problem-Based Learning approach (considering the extent of involvement of the tutor and the level of information needed to solve a particular problem); the gamified approach (game elements e.g., points, badges, leader boards, progress bars) to be embedded into the curriculum of a module or programme of studies; “modules of tomorrow” to engrain an analytical mindset in future managers; and the skills that a learner needs regarding data acquisition, preparation, analysis, visualization, interpretation and communication, in order to be consistent with industry trends and job prospects in the Business Analytics domain.
As a BILT associate, I would like to plan and deliver workshops, where I will showcase facilitation techniques for more engaging seminars with particular emphasis on learning games such as the “think-pair-share”, the “paired problem solving”, the “divide & conquer”, and the “Venn diagram”. I would also like to plan and deliver workshops as well as develop blog posts on the employability-relevant literature (how this has impacted the higher education sector across the years and why it should be a strategic priority towards increasing student engagement within a teaching session) and on the practices to successfully integrate it into building the university curriculum and supporting extra-curricular teaching/learning activities. Finally, it would be worth focusing on the development of appropriate resources on the use of the Artificial Intelligence technology to support sustained learning and enhance students’ learning efforts; particular emphasis could be given on the construction of a Chatbot (which is an intelligent agent technology) to support the online material and complement the in-person material.
I am really looking forward to engaging in productive discussions with other BILT associates and student fellows!
