Creating Learning Communities through Flipped Classes: A Challenge, an Answer, or an Opportunity for Teaching Strategic Human Resource Management?

During the last decade, student enrolments in Masters by coursework qualifications (referred to here onwards as postgraduate students) have increased significantly with a substantial percentage of international students1 contributing to the growth in numbers (Morgan, 2014). For example, in 2016 postgraduate students in Australian universities increased by 3.9% to 401,858 (Department of Education and Training Australia, 2017). In addition, 21.4% of the total students in Australian universities in 2016 were international students, with a majority coming from Peoples Republic of China, India, Brazil, South Korea, and Malaysia (Australian Education International, 2017; Department of Immigration and Border Protection Australia, 2016).2 The new generation of students, compared to previous cohorts of domestic students who generally work a few years in a particular profession prior to undertaking postgraduate studies, seem to show a greater tendency to undertake postgraduate studies immediately after completing their undergraduate degree. This trend may be due to several reasons. First, young people may assume a relationship between being qualified and having a lasting professional career (Dwyer & Wyn, 2001). Second, the labour market in Australia is currently over-supplied with graduate students, and only 68% of Bachelor’s graduates from the class of 2014 had a full-time job four months after graduating; this was the lowest full-time employment rate for new graduates since 1982 (Graduate Careers Australia, 2014). As a result, it may be a commonly held view that an undergraduate degree is a minimum level of qualification for an increasing number of jobs, and that employers are raising the qualification levels required for particular jobs in response to the “over-supply” of graduates (Brooks & Everettt, 2009). Third, it could be due to the perception that there is greater potential for graduates with a secondary postgraduate degree to gain higher salaries than graduates with an undergraduate degree (Morgan, 2014). Regardless of the reasoning, increase in student numbers, changes in student demographics, and lack of practical work experience pose challenges to postgraduate teaching and learning. This study focuses on strategic human resource management teaching and learning activities amongst a community of postgraduate students and how these teaching and learning practices can provide opportunities for students without any prior work experience, to gain practical management experience. Although lack of work experience in undergraduate strategic human resource management teaching and learning has been highlighted (Coetzer & Sitlington, 2014), human resource management pedagogy has explored neither the effect of work experience on postgraduate students nor the demographic changes in student cohorts. This paper attempts to address this gap by using our experience and reflections in teaching strategic human resource management and answers the following main research question: