BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
ost business school institutions have, by now, understood the importance of the student, or customer, experience – that of managing a seamless, high-quality and personalised experience for each of their MBA students.
systems. Consistently, participants cited the challenges they had in tracking student engagement when working online.
Javier Yanez-Arenas, MBA director, Adam Smith Business School: “The biggest challenge for blended learning is the change in staff mindset. It seems like institutions still think in terms of physical buildings. The investment in technology, training and pedagogy for this new world is not done at the same pace. “We need to be investing in the pedagogy; in engagement with students; how we measure engagement; how we interact with colleagues; how we use the materials from other colleagues; and the production of the materials. “Quite often, institutions think that the investment in producing materials will be a one-time thing – they believe they can use the materials forever. That is not true. There is a misconception in our industry that online learning is cheaper. I don’t think that is the right way to think about it.” Elena Beleska-Spasova, pro-dean for education and innovation, Henley Business School: “It is important to realise that blended learning is not online learning. We need to recognise the specificity of keeping someone’s attention on screen and engaging them beyond the synchronous part of their programme. “The integrated, holistic approach to the student experience online is different from the classroom and different from blended learning. We need to address these differences in the pedagogy, learning design, engagement and learning support.” Thabang Mokoaleli-Mokoteli, MBA director, Wits Business School: “The one thing I have seen is that students are always tense online. Some still aren’t used to being online.” Chinedum Ewuzie, MBA director, Lagos Business School: “We had a couple of challenges in online learning – one being how to keep students engaged. Many of the students have to attend classes on a laptop for many hours, on top of all the other things they do on their laptops, so maintaining that student’s attention is difficult.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the need to create an experience for online course components and activities that is of an equally high quality. This need to adapt to virtual instruction – and in some cases, enrolment – is a critical challenge facing business schools as they seek to maintain their standards and reputation in a competitive market. The pandemic has highlighted the pros and cons of blended models of teaching and business schools and their MBA programmes are now understanding the importance of customer experience and why ‘learning experience’ also needs to be given equal consideration. AMBA & BGA, in association with Canvas, gathered international business school leaders at a roundtable discussion for a deep dive into the pressing challenges facing education and to highlight how learning experience can be adapted and an enriched student experience realised. Here are some highlights from the meeting. Part one: Providing online learning The conversation started with each panellist explaining some of the main challenges that their school had experienced in online and blended learning. Participants attending the roundtable came from a diverse range of schools, some of which already had online learning in place before Covid-19. Others were new to this mode of delivery and had experienced problems with their students’ ability to attend online learning due to challenges with internet connectivity. Despite these differences, many referenced similar challenges in providing online learning, including changing staff members’ mindsets, adapting material for online learning, creating a platform for online connections to be made and training staff for new
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