Our virtual campus is a campus just like the others at the School: it has a library, amphitheatres, and student clubs
enhance the physical and digital learning experience. I believe hybrid working and learning will be the new norm. How do we prepare the students for life outside the university? Business leaders want people who have a certain experience. They want them to learn something but they also want them to be prepared for a future in their companies. Rebecca Loades, Director, Career Accelerator Programs, ESMT Berlin At ESMT, we have separated content creation and content delivery in blended and online learning. This allows us to share and swap content with other Schools more easily. When designing for online, every single minute of the course is thought about in depth. We therefore have to be much more precise in our preparation than when we are offering a course in person. Having that control, and being able to apply that rigour, is the gift of an asynchronous environment. Each of our online courses has a defined manual about how it should be taught. This approach enables us to separate course development and course delivery so that students learn from faculty with superb domain knowledge but may engage with a different faculty member during their learning journey. We have some 550 degree-seeking students and a relatively small faculty body, so we had
in a couple of months and we now know that this is not the case. These Schools had the option to expand because they had technology already in place. Lots of people needed to be educated in understanding the solutions that are out there that can really bring them an immersive and engaging experience. I would that, say since the end of last year, lots of Business Schools have come to understand that platforms such as Zoom or Teams cannot deliver the level of engagement and the learning outcomes that they would expect for their programmes – and specifically executive education. We also are working with the corporate community to deliver learning and development to employees, and we are observing the same trends in this arena. So in light of this, what is the way into the future? What have we learned? I would personally like to go a little bit further, and ask what is the revolution now? What can we do to be more inclusive and reach out to more people [through technology]? How can we make it more engaging? What about belonging? What are the priorities and how can we help Business Schools to be even better despite the pandemic? Schools need to embrace horizontal learning and create connections. Technology must
makers from Business Schools across Europe to find out in more qualitative terms whether Business Schools have changed, updated, or tweaked their models because of the pandemic during the past year; what plans are afoot for the coming 12-18 months; how Schools are identifying new opportunities for the year ahead; and how they are driving digital transformation and skills development. AMBA & BGA was joined by experts from technology company Barco – as well During a lively discussion, panellists took stock of what had changed over the past 18 months, what they have learned, and what the future might look like for Business Schools and their students in the digital economy. Here are some highlights from the conversation. as representatives from the business education community – to explore the challenges.
Simone Hammer, Global Head of Marketing Teaching and Training, Barco
We worked with a couple of early-adopting Business Schools that tried out our virtual classroom when the pandemic started, and they were happy and deployed more and expanded what they had in place. Many [Business Schools] have used conferencing systems to get through the pandemic – but we all thought it would be over
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