Best Instructor Selection Process

A total of 165 instructors and co-instructors teaching at 152 universities in 37 countries whose students took part in the 2018-1 round of the X-Culture competition were considered for the Best Instructor Award.

About 100 of those instructors did an absolutely outstanding job: their students came in well prepared; they provided excellent support to their students throughout the project; they managed all the paperwork diligently and effectively; and they completed all their duties – from report evaluations to serving on various committees – very diligently.

They all deserve a BIG THANK YOU! Their universities can be proud of such having such professors.

However, some groups of students did better than others and some instructors went the extra mile to help their students and make X-Culture a success. Those few deserve a special recognition.

Each instructor was rated and ranked along 124 performance variables.

The most important factor was the class-average performance. Ultimately, it is all about student performance. Student ratings in terms of effort, intellectual contribution, collegiality, as well as the personal share of the work completed by the students in the total work completed by their teams all were taken into account. Thus, to a large degree this Award goes to the best class/university, rather than an individual instructor.

However, a number of additional instructor-specific factors were also considered:

Class-average student diligence as measured by students’ ability to meet deadlines and submit weekly progress reports were given a substantial weight.

Class-average report quality and plagiarism statistics were also taken into account, but weighted less because the quality of the team report and originality of the report (absence of plagiarism) was affected not only by the students of the instructor in question, but 4-7 students from other universities.

A number of indicators of the instructors’ personal performance were also considered and given a substantial weight: from the quality of preparation of the pre-project materials (e.g., student rosters, accuracy of the names and email addresses, etc.), to the quality of the report evaluations submitted by the instructors at the end of the project (reliability of the ratings, depth and quality of the feedback). Additional help provided by the instructor, such as help with webinars, symposia, and training material development were also taken into account.

The class size and the level of study were also considered to acknowledge the fact that ensuring high level of performance in large undergraduate courses may be more challenging than in small graduate courses.

After all 165 instructors were ranked on each of the 124 variables, it was impossible to select one best instructor. However, a small group emerged who ranked almost perfectly on the vast majority of the dimensions.

The list of 30 professors who ranked the highest overall are provided below in alphabetical order.

We deliberately do not rank them from 1 to 30. First, they all did an outstanding job as instructors. Second, such rankings could change substantially depending on which particular variables are given more weight.

It is important to note that there was no clear gap between the “best” and the “rest” groups. At least 50 other instructors received excellent evaluations along all dimensions, including very positive student performance reviews and exceptional diligence and helpfulness throughout the semester. But the line had to be drawn somewhere and if we had to select a smaller group of instructors whose performance was even better than that of the rest, these 30 are our 2018-1 Best Instructor Award recipients.

2018-1 BEST X-CULTURE EDUCATORS

Abdulrahman Chikhouni, Mount Royal University , Canada
Ana Maria Velasquez, Universidad EAFIT, Colombia
Andrea Rohrer / Rico Baldegger , School of Management Fribourg (HEG-FR), Switzerland
Angelika Zimmermann, Loughborough University, UK
Ashar Saleem, Institute of Business Administration, Pakistan
Bibi Noraini Mohd Yusuf, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Malaysia
Bice Della Piana, University of Salerno, Italy
Carrie Levesque, University of North Carolina Greensboro, USA
Daniel Rottig, Florida Gulf Coast University, USA
Ernesto Tavoletti, University of Macerata, Italy
Florian Taeube, European Management School, Germany
Jennifer Leigh, Nazareth College, USA
Julio Pinedo Lara, Universidad EAN, Colombia
Karen Lynden, University of North Carolina Greensboro, USA
Leighton Wilks, University of Calgary, Canada
Leilani Baumanis, Johnson & Wales University, USA
Loretta Battaglia, Universita  Cattolica del S. Cuore, Italy
Lynn Leng Khim Lim, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Switzerland
Martha Maznevski, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Muhammad Ayaz, Institute of Business Administration Karachi, Pakistan
Oleh Leskiv, Budokan School Lviv, Ukraine
Paul Katuse, USA International University, Kenya
Peter Magnusson, University of Alabama, USA
Raghu Kurthakoti, Arcadia University, USA
Reccia Charles, St George’s University, Grenada
Rimi Zakaria, University of Wisconsin in Whitewater, USA
Robert Stephens, Shippensburg University, USA
Stefano Elia , Politecnico di Milano , Italy
Stephan Gerschewski, University of Reading, UK
Tim Muth, Florida Institute of Technology, USA