Alumni Book Nook: Greg Rouault (BComm’94)

University of Saskatchewan (USask) alumnus Greg Rouault (BComm’94), a resident of Hiroshima, Japan, is the co-editor of Case studies in business innovation: Readings for discussion. The book, which was authored by Marcos Benevides, Chris Valvona, and Mark Firth, was published in 2024 by Tokyo’s Atama-ii Books.

Rouault, who was born in Nipawin, Sask., grew up going to French immersion school in North Battleford, Sask., and attended high school in Wadena, Sask., before moving to Saskatoon. He received his Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1994 from USask before pursuing additional post-secondary studies internationally. He later earned a graduate certificate in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Deakin University in Australia, a Master of Applied Linguistics degree from Macquarie University in Australia, and a graduate certificate in sustainable business management from Anaheim University in California, USA.

Rouault, who is currently an associate professor at Hiroshima Shudo University, continues to look back on his time as a USask student with fondness, particularly his learning experiences.

“I greatly valued how my professors were able to weave in stories from the real world to help us better understand the theories we were being introduced to,” he said. “The process of analytical and critical thinking to make decisions from business data and the chances to get involved in groupwork projects were some of the most rewarding experiences at USask with long-term takeaways. Keeping with these positive experiences of learning through tasks and group projects was a guiding principle as I started my own teaching.”

The Green&White asked Rouault about his career path and the process of editing the new book.

After working for 10 years in sales and marketing in packaged goods in Western Canada, I made a career change to foreign language teaching overseas. Japan offered an established conversation school industry which provided a visa, an apartment, and training; a stable economy and currency; and a vibrant business and historical culture. In addition, volleyball is a popular sport here and I was able to continue my role as a referee, eventually progressing to become a Level V International Volleyball Official refereeing here in the professional league and taking part in World Cups and Olympic qualifying events.

This English-language coursebook provides 30 case-study readings on business topics, such as employee management, product development, and strategic planning. The cases highlight innovations and strategies at real-world companies. Each short reading is followed by discussion questions and extension tasks for classroom work, with a longer team project at the end of each chapter encouraging students to apply chapter concepts.

My personal experience and strong belief in learning by doing have led me to follow an experiential theory of learning. Together with my academic studies and teaching in English for specific purposes, I have adopted a task-based approach to language teaching and learning. After attending various conferences and making my own presentations on using and developing materials and projects for task-based teaching practices, I became recognized as someone with something to offer in this area. I was also the book reviews editor for JALT Journal (the research journal of the Japan Association for Language Teaching) for a dozen years, so people had seen the outcome of my collaborative efforts with authors as an editor on shorter texts. Based on this experience and exposure, the co-author team of one of the task-based textbooks I had adopted for my business communication course approached me to edit this new case-studies publication they were working on.

The editing centered largely on two areas: 1) making sure the different readings hung together under the chapter theme and fit stylistically across the volume and 2) ensuring the unit tasks and the end-of-chapter extended tasks and projects stayed true to the adopted operationalization of language-learning tasks, with students having a focus on negotiating meaning toward task completion while using their existing linguistic resources. It was rewarding to hear from the authors that my insights were perceptive and that my comments provided direction toward improving the quality of the text.

This book is co-authored by the team who created the award-winning textbook Widgets Inc., which received the prestigious 2019 British Council ELTon for Course Innovation. Thus, there is a lot of brand recognition domestically for that title. This new title provides a different approach with longer readings as case studies that could supplement the use of Widgets in a course or be used as a stand-alone text. Feedback from instructors implementing the text has been overall positive, noting the adaptability of the resources for classroom-taught lessons or independent self-study along with the freedom and flexibility to dip in to cover whichever cases and tasks that may be of greatest interest to the instructor and their students or best align with the course goals and sequence of other content being covered.