Best Instructor Selection Process

A total of 155 instructors and co-instructors teaching at 142 universities in 41 countries whose students took part in the 2019-2 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 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 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 a high level of performance in large undergraduate courses may be more challenging than in small graduate courses.

After all 155  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 33 professors who ranked the highest overall is provided below in alphabetical order.

We deliberately do not rank them from 1 to 33. 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 33 are our Best Instructor Award recipients this semester.

2019-2 BEST X-CULTURE EDUCATORS

Ashar Saleem, Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Pakistan
Carolina Garcia, Mrs, Colombia
Daniel Gomez, Mrs, Colombia
Daniela Acosta, Mrs, Colombia
Diana Gomez, The University of Alabama, United States
Dina Frutos-Bencze, Saint Anselm College, United States
Dirk Boehe, Massey University, New Zealand
Dirk Morschett, Universitad de Fribourg / Universität Freiburg, Switzerland
Domenico Salvatore, Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa Napoli, Italy
Edward Akoto, Henderson State University, United States
Ellie Hickman, De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom
Esha Mendiratta, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Filip De Beule, KU Leuven, Belgium
Gordon Perchthold, Singapore Management University, Singapore
Julio Cesar Botero, La Salle, Colombia
Karen Lynden, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, United States
Kim Pigeon, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, United States
Leonor Sopas, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal
Liviu Florea, Washburn University, United States
Longzhu Dong, the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire, United States
Lorena A. Palacios-Chacon, Universidad del Norte, Colombia
Louise Curran, Toulouse Business School (TBS) , France
Nora Al-Jindi, Dar Al-Hekma University, Saudi Arabia
Reccia Charles, St. George’s University, Grenada
Revti Raman Sharma, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, New Zealand
Robert Warmenhoven, vHall-Larenstein Applied University, Netherlands
Sadhna Dash, Jyoti Nivas College Autonomous, India
Serdar Karabati, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey
Sharon Southcott, Coventry University, United Kingdom
Simona Gentile-Luedecke, Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Tiit Elenurm, Estonian Business School, Estonia
Tolu Bewaji, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, Jamaica
Vincenzo Pisano, Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy