¹School of Business, Western New England College, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA

Correspondence: William P Ferris, Professor of Management, School of Business, Western New England College, 1215 Wilbraham Road, Springfield, Massachusetts 01119, USA. Tel: +1 413-782-1629; Fax: +1 413-796-2068; E-mail: bferris@wnec.edu

Abstract

The idea of this new exercise is to involve two project team participants in an interpersonal conflict in front of a classroom of learner/observers and then to debrief the entire experience in terms of emotional intelligence (EI) concepts in a way that clarifies these concepts experientially. It is preceded by EI readings and may be followed by extended on-line discussions and a variety of different papers and/or homework assignments. It can be used in traditional, blended learning (BL), or on-line courses or training classrooms. Originally developed to involve on-ground (face-to-face) and on-line students from the same course in the same exercise either synchronously or asynchronously, it utilizes a webcam and electronic blackboard system such as generally available in all universities as well as an original survey tool to facilitate the debrief. Advantages of on-line processing of experiential exercises and some potentially inherent differences in the two methods as well as use of video clips in enriched debriefing are described.