Preben Schack, VP of Sales, Learning Experience Division, Barco It’s exciting being part of this revolution in online learning. I have been part of many disruptions throughout my life in the media world and I see this as one of the next disruptions. I’m fascinated to find out how we can use technology to make our education even better. I don’t think that what we have experienced throughout the pandemic is at its end. I think it’s at its beginning. I can confirm that what we hear around the world is that executives love to use online platforms, but they are more discerning when choosing software and programmes. This might have to change as we move forward to meet the needs of different MBA students and their courses. The big question for me is how do we make that experience better and how do we use technology to connect? The experience of teaching needs to be engaging and immersive but also affordable. And for this to happen, a possible strategy could be for institutions to collaborate and share technologies and platforms. How can we give professors, teachers, and students an even better experience in the educational space? That is what I’m passionate about.
make a lot of difference. But when you are in a small environment, your peers push you to participate, even if you are in front of a computer. The world will never be the same. Everything has become reachable from everywhere. I think that this will lead to more flexibility so that, in some companies, employees will not need to go into the office anymore. This means we need to have people who are able to train, be trained, and then work in this context. This is a very good – but very tough – challenge for us as educators. Learning should be enabling and if we ask what the enablers of learning are, the answer would be this horizontal learning, connections, and networking. As Business Schools, we have to ask ourselves whether we can build something that might not be able to completely substitute a classroom experience but can help students get more from online learning; in other words, we nee to replicate the connection to the business world using horizontal learning. We need to be able to deliver the connection and networking, as well as the social aspect of a Business School, in an online environment.
able to challenge the prevailing notions of what leadership actually looks like. You can do that much better when you’re immersed in a space where it is a moving feast. We can’t underestimate the value of providing that real-time, real-life experience, but the technology has to be there to support it. Now the technology is a platform that provides [Business Schools] with the tools to do this. The whole notion of how MBAs are actually put to our communities, not just the students but our communities more generally, has to be reimagined and this is a really good point in time to do that.
Antonio Giangreco, Director of Graduate Programmes, IESEG
In terms of technology and what we can use, there is a very long path ahead, because during the Covid-19 pandemic, we had a considerably higher volume of requests for psychological counselling that we had pre-Covid. In our School, we have very small groups with classes of less than 30 participants, so interaction in the classroom is guaranteed. Of course, in any other classroom – with 300 students – being there physically or accessing the lectures remotely from home, does not
People who are introverted, who don’t feel comfortable, or people who don’t have English as a first language, are making highly valuable and timely contributions to a much broader conversation
| 29
Ambition | BE IN BRILLIANT COMPANY
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online