It is now essential that Business Schools provide a quality online experience for all students
is applied and engaged in the challenges we face in society and in our economy. Business and business education are being disrupted as never before by globalisation and rapid technological change. How are you future-proofing your School’s post-graduate Business programmes? The year 2020 was a challenge for us all, and at Macquarie Business School, we saw exceptional efforts from staff to deliver high-quality teaching and student experience, despite the challenges presented by the global Covid-19 pandemic. Our courses are co-designed with industry, meaning our degrees are reflective of industry realities and future demands. Students graduate with the skills and knowledge they will need to meet the current and future challenges of their chosen profession. We work to create innovative, engaging, and impactful learning experiences for our students. This includes work-integrated learning at scale, flexibility in delivery, future-focused curricula and an enriched and engaged student experience. Our focus on work-integrated learning at scale has been affected by Covid-19 interruptions. There are now opportunities to extend employability, mentoring at scale and with alumni, and more work- integrated learning using digital modalities and technology. In response to the global challenge of finding ways to provide access to digital skills learners from around the world, Macquarie Business School created a set of courses on Excel Skills for Business.
to move to a hybrid model, capturing the best of online and in-person, synchronous and asynchronous learning, while also optimising student engagement, connection and collaboration. For example, Macquarie Business School is partnering with Forage to deliver in-curriculum virtual work experience to students on our post-graduate courses. Covid-19 has meant that many students have had difficulty accessing work experience in the real world. Forage bridges a critical gap by providing a platform that allows organisations to bring real-world career experience to students through bite-sized virtual experience programmes. Is there a reluctance on the part of Business Schools to introduce too much change into their programmes? Not really. We have increasingly given responsibility to course directors to guide us on where programmes need to head, and our academic colleagues apply their judgement across disciplinary context, commercial understanding, and student need. MBAs care about sustainability and climate change. How important is sustainability, and in what ways have Business Schools adapted this into their programmes? Sustainability and social responsibility are embedded throughout the curricula of our MBA and GMBA. The GMBA also has the standalone subject ‘Global sustainability and corporate social responsibility: Be sustainable’. In alignment with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals,
The seemingly mundane topic remains a key skill to acquire for anyone looking for work. With the surge of interest in data analysis, Excel remains a critical digital ‘door-opener’ skill in a rapidly growing segment of work. In partnership with Coursera, we launched four Excel Skills for Business courses that have since attracted more than 150,000 learners from across the globe. Do you think the business education sector, as a whole, is responding quickly enough to this disruption? Last year meant a rapid move to online learning for our students. Our staff made a tremendous effort and commitment to achieving a positive experience for our students. Across the sector, in response to the disruptions we have experienced, there is significant work underway to provide students with the skills necessary to manage through disruption. The interface with Technology and STEM is crucial to the future of business research and education. This is why we offer a Master of Business Analytics which is cross taught between Macquarie Business School and our Faculty of Science and Engineering. It’s a great programme, and shows the power of multi-disciplinary education as we begin to think about the education of the future. How is technology continuing to impact Business Schools in the wake of Covid-19? Covid-19 has prompted a reimagining of how, when and where we deliver education to our learners. The opportunity now is
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