TIR · PDW
Teaching in the Rough
Bringing Cognition to Life in the Classroom
Annual Meeting 2026 — Philadelphia
| Date |
TBA |
| Time |
TBA |
| Location |
TBA |
| Contact |
Tyler Burch
tylerburch@isu.edu |
| Audience |
Open to all |
| Pre submission required |
NO |
| Pre submission deadline |
N/A |
| Submit to |
N/A |
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Overview
Teaching in the Rough: Bringing Cognition to Life in the Classroom is a Professional Development Workshop for the 2026 AOM Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, sponsored by the Managerial and Organizational Cognition (MOC) Division.
Cognition is everywhere in management: judgment, sensemaking, strategy, ethics, team coordination, yet notoriously hard to teach in ways that stick. Teaching in the Rough gathers eight expert instructors to share classroom-tested exercises for teaching cognition as it happens.
In a 120-minute round-robin format, participants rotate through three 25-minute breakout tables and leave with concrete ideas they can use in their own courses.
Meet the Facilitators
Organizers
Tyler Burch
Idaho State University
Jay Bates
Rutgers University
Stephen Courtright, Texas A&M University
Teaching Like a Researcher: Inviting Curiosity and Credibility in an Age of Skepticism
Stephen is the Flip and Susan Flippen Endowed Chair at Mays Business School and director of the Flippen Leadership Institute. Poets & Quants named him one of the Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors in 2022. In this session, he'll show how to rebuild student buy-in for research by leading with questions, answering with data, and putting students into the same activities used in published studies.
Jennifer Eury, Pennsylvania State University
Structured Reflection for Leadership Development
Jen is a Clinical Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at Smeal College of Business. Her roundtable shares practical strategies for designing reflective assignments that move students from passive learners to self-aware leaders, including a brief live reflection participants can adapt.
Payal Sharma, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Resilience Board of Directors: An Experiential Exercise
Payal is an Assistant Professor of Management at UNLV's Lee Business School. In her roundtable, she'll walk participants through the "Board of Directors" exercise, which helps students map their professional and academic relationships, spot patterns and gaps, and translate them into concrete steps for building resilience.
Brittany Lambert, Indiana University
Navigating Team Differences as a Leader
Brittany is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Kelley School of Business and was part of the team awarded the 2020 SIOP Visionary Circle Grant for research on resilience in the gig economy. In this session, she'll run a hands-on Lego activity that surfaces team differences in a fun, low-stakes way and opens the door to a deeper conversation about how leaders can harness those differences instead of suppressing them.
Jeff Bednar, Brigham Young University
Teaching Ethics Through the Lens of Rivalry
Jeff is an Associate Professor at BYU's Marriott School of Business whose Academy of Management Journal paper on "organizational ghosts" has drawn wide attention, including coverage in Harvard Business Review. His roundtable explores how something most students already care deeply about, sports rivalries, can become a powerful entry point for honest conversations about ethics.
Kathy Lund Dean, Gustavus Adolphus College
Tried-and-True Experiential Learning Assessments
Kathy holds the Board of Trustees Distinguished Chair in Leadership and Ethics at Gustavus and co-edited the Journal of Management Education for over seven years. Experiential learning is famously messy to grade; her roundtable closes the "Grade Expectations" gap with proven frameworks for assessing student growth without flattening what makes experiential work valuable.
Alex Bolinger, Idaho State University
Scaffolding Newbies from Entrepreneurial Pitch to Presentation: The Nine Boxes Exercise
Alex is the Idaho Central Credit Union Endowed Professor of Management at ISU and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Management Education as well as serving on the review board for Academy of Management Learning and Education. His 60 minute "Nine Boxes" exercise gives students a versatile scaffold for anticipating audience questions and turning a rough entrepreneurial pitch into a polished presentation.
Kumaran Rajaram, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Gen AI–Augmented Learning Design to Transform and Deepen Inquiry-Based Learning
Kumaran is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Management and Organization at NTU's Nanyang Business School and a Fellow of NTU's Centre for Research and Development in Learning (CRADLE). In this session, he'll share how generative AI can be thoughtfully integrated into inquiry-based learning, covering classroom-tested design considerations, practical applications, and strategies for avoiding common pitfalls.
Workshop format
This PDW follows a 120-minute round-robin workshop format. After a welcome and preview of breakout sessions and facilitators, participants complete three 25-minute rotations between breakout tables.
Each table is led by an expert instructor who explains and demonstrates a classroom-tested experiential exercise, activity, or lesson plan for a cognition-related topic. Instructors share tips for facilitation, key learning points, and lessons learned from working with different student populations.
Schedule at a glance:
Welcome, introductory activity, and preview of breakout sessions and facilitators: 20 minutes
Three 25-minute round-robin sessions with facilitators: 85 minutes
Debrief, Q&A, feedback, and wrap up: 15 minutes
Who should attend
Open to all. Anyone who teaches, whether new or experienced, is invited to attend. No pre-registration is required.
Whether you are looking for fresh classroom activities, want to share something that already works well in your own teaching, or simply want to connect with fellow educators, this session is for you.
Join us in Philadelphia to take home some concrete ideas you can use in your very next semester!