The Inspirational Paradigm for Jesuit Business Education challenges educators to meet students' hungers by integrating values-driven leadership and Jesuit identity into the curriculum. Our study explores the use of photo scavenger hunts as a pedagogical tool to achieve this goal. Photo scavenger hunts require students to look for items that represent specific themes and take selfies and other pictures as a team. They send the photos back to the classroom where they are displayed and discussed when the students return from the hunt. These scavenger hunts allow students to derive meaning from campus spaces, fostering self-discovery, team cohesion, and a deeper connection to the university.
The photo scavenger hunt aligns with the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm of context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation, enabling students to reflect on their lives within the university and other organizational contexts. The rules of the hunt ensure that students engage with the content on multiple levels, promoting critical thinking, self-awareness, and reflection. We describe the use of photo scavenger hunts as a method to examine organizational culture, uncover hidden curricula, and embody the Inspirational Paradigm while engaging in team-building and low-stakes presentations. Sample assignment instructions and debrief questions are provided to maximize the educational impact of the photos, along with practical considerations such as weather conditions, student abilities, and respecting sacred spaces.
We aim to conduct this presentation in a way that exemplifies these outcomes and helps build community at the CJBE conference. Before the conference presentation, we will conduct our own photo scavenger hunt on the John Carroll campus and use those photos as illustrations in our presentation to ground the discussion in the context of place and introduce attendees to aspects of the campus. These pictures from the campus will provide background and meaning, demonstrating how the photo scavenger hunt works in practice. We hope our presentation will inspire attendees and foster a sense of community for the CJBE attendees. At the end of our conference presentation, we would like to propose an assignment for attendees to complete, with a prize such as a Starbucks gift card awarded at the end of the conference for the best follow-up. The assignment would be to text us a picture from the conference and a short explanation of how the picture depicts John Carroll or CJBE organizational culture or embodies the Inspirational Paradigm. If possible, we would like to show the picture at the final business meeting of the conference and present the prize. We understand this may not be possible given the needs of the meeting, but we propose it in the hopes of building community.