BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
I t’s hard to avoid the hype around the growth of online learning in the wake of Covid-19 and industry 4.0. Yet, the shift in technology capability is real and will have a discernible impact on learning, in terms of providing the flexibility and pace students need. In this context, it is noteworthy that 69% of current students believed that the delivery and/or content of their MBA programme could be improved, in a 2020 survey of 752 students by AMBA & BGA. Online, blended, and virtual business education provides Business Schools with a unique opportunity to address this. Learning looks set to become more immersive, interactive and responsive to students’ needs. Developments in edtech could, for example, allow faculty to spend more time with students, and an increase in focus on working to embed their learning and critical thinking. To take full advantage of the opportunity created by advanced technology, there needs to be a revolution in education – not just to meet the needs of industry, but also to ensure the best possible student experience, use of staff time, and investment. In September, AMBA & BGA in partnership with edtech provider Instructure, brought Business School leaders together in a virtual roundtable to look at the ‘new normal’ of business education. It considered how, with the exponential growth in online and virtual learning environments, student success can be ensured in both synchronous and asynchronous online learning environments. Matthew Evans, Regional Director, Global Markets at Instructure, kicked off the discussion: ‘One of the key components of student success and engagement is having a platform
which brings all the different tools and technologies together in one place so that content and activities are easy for students to find, and also so you can gather meaningful and actionable data about how those different tools and technologies are used in different ways, which then leads into student success. ‘One of the things I think technology does really well is to use data, but it can streamline, speed up and automate some of the heavy lifting and some of the processes associated with providing the educational experience.
be spent on enriching the experience for students and on the emotional aspects of working with students and their wellbeing. I think that’s where the shift is likely to take place now. We have the tools, but we will see the full adoption of them in education 4.0. ‘When we are re-thinking the international aspect of programmes, online learning gives students the opportunity to meet and connect with students from different backgrounds. If we were just thinking about on-campus delivery, then they wouldn’t have that exposure to the wider world. When we think about complex problems, like climate change and poverty, Business Schools could be very well placed to help overcome these. Global problems require global connections and collaborations
to solve them, therefore it’s important that we provide access to all geographies and demographics.
‘Students are placing the pandemic, climate change and broader environmental and societal concerns in the same basket’
Technology gives us that opportunity and, while I agree that we aren’t quite
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there yet and we’ve got lots of work to do, I think it’s exciting that we are on the cusp of “here”.’ ‘Student success is about the whole experience’ José Manuel Esteves Sousa, Associate Dean, MBA and Tech MBA, IE Business School ‘At IE Business School, we don’t do lectures on the MBA. All classes are based around active learning. Schools that [focus on] lecturing are the ones who are going to face a more disruptive approach to the new environment. ‘For us, at the beginning [of the transition to online], it was complicated to replicate the emotional parts of active learning in the class itself. To overcome attention span problems and Zoom fatigue, we designed a set of active learning activities (for example, breakout rooms, whiteboard and polls) to promote class interaction. ‘Student success is about the whole experience… I don’t think it’s about the
‘Certainly, if we look at teaching generally, a lot of time is spent on attendance, marking and grading, when actually, we would much rather those experts were having meaningful conversations with students. This is different in different Business Schools, which are again slightly different environments to other higher education institutions and the school sector. ‘A lot of that activity can be handled quite successfully using technology and with that data. Then teachers’ time can
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