How Cold-Calling Warms Up Class Discussion
According to conventional wisdom, cold-calling in the classroom just makes students clam up. Instructors hate to do it, because they think that students hate being called on at random. But Elise Dallimore, Julie Hertenstein, and Marjorie Platt, all of of Northeastern University, 
discovered otherwise in their study “Impact of Cold-Calling on Student Voluntary Participation,” published in the Journal of Management Education–and their findings have significant implications for management educators. Click here to play or download the podcast interview or subscribe on iTunes by following this link.
Dr. Elise J. Dallimore is an Associate Professor of Organizational Communication and Associate Vice Provost for First-year Undergraduate Programs at Northeastern University. Her research interests lie in “organizational learning” including research focusing on training and development issues, including discussion teaching and cold-calling, and has been published in national and international journals such as Human Relations, Communication Education, Women’s Studies in Communication and Journal of Management Education, among other varied sources.
Dr. Julie H. Hertenstein is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on how managers use accounting information in making decisions, especially decisions about new product development and decisions about capital budgeting. In addition to publishing numerous articles in academic journals, she has been the co-editor of a widely-used graduate accounting textbook and has written over 60 Harvard Business School cases, notes and teaching notes, many of which have been re-printed in leading accounting textbooks.
Dr. Marjorie A. Platt is Senior Associate Dean and Dean of Faculty at Northeastern University, and is a Certified Management Accountant. She conducts research on factors affecting student comfort with and learning based on classroom discussion teaching. She is particularly interested in how cold calling during class discussion affects preparation for the class, frequency of participation in the class discussion, comfort with class participation, and learning from the class discussion.
Dr. Cynthia V. Fukami is Professor in the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. She is currently Associate Editor of the Journal of Management Education, and serves on the editorial board for Academy of Management Learning and Education, among others. She has served on the Academy of Management’s Teaching Committee, and was the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society (OB-1). She co-edited Sage’s Handbook of Management Learning, Education and Development with Steven Armstrong.
