Salah Khalil “When it comes to critical thinking, construct definition is a huge thing. If you cannot define it, you cannot measure it and you cannot teach it if you can’t measure it. “In our work with the University of Cambridge, we looked at a huge body of academic literature which is predominantly found in philosophy, psychology and education. Although each of these three disciplines has a different definition of critical thinking, they all agree that it is a set of skills and dispositions or behaviours. “We then asked ourselves, ‘Which way should we go? Skills or dispositions?’ Dispositions or behaviours are extremely hard to measure and you will rarely find an assessment that is academically grounded. The academic basis of even the most renowned ones, such the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, is very thin. Plus, the next crisis is a skills crisis not a crisis of behaviours. “We asked the University of Cambridge to focus on skills and find out what 150 professors – 50 from each discipline – define as the skills that make up critical thinking because we wanted to have a very narrow construct definition. They came up with a construct that critical thinking is the component skills of problem-solving, analysis, creative thinking, interpretation, evaluation and reasoning. “Across all three disciplines, the literature also agreed that critical thinking can be taught and it can be assessed. They agreed on how it can be assessed, but they disagreed on how it can be taught because some think critical thinking should be taught as a stand‑alone topic, while others think it’s subject-specific.” How do you currently encourage your alumni to upskill, reskill and update their knowledge to meet the changing demands of the business world? Eno Amasi Maycock “We run enrichment activities around our MBAs that include the alumni. We don’t try to sell to the alumni. Instead, they give back through masterclasses. Over the years, their engagement has grown and they support our students to work as interns within their organisations as part of our final MBA consultancy project. Recruitment and graduate employability follow on from that. What we’ve also found is that these enrichment activities work as a lever for a change in mindset.” Julie Rosborough “We’re moving to microcredentials and I think of these as an opportunity rather than a threat – they also offer a way to engage with alumni. Designed in the right way, they can take you to an MBA or a specialist master’s degree and I think you can also use them in a savvy marketing way to tease people into more learning.” Elaine Limond “If they haven’t been in education for 20 years, alumni can sometimes be a bit intimidated about coming back into education. So microcredentials and short courses are quite often the ones that will open the door and bring them in.
“For a lot of alumni, committing to courses that are longer is quite a jump. So, online formats support this engagement. But I’ve also worked with employers that don’t want to be fully online; they want to come together and meet people from other industries. They don’t just want their group of staff coming to a different venue to do something different. They want them to mix, explore and learn from that curiosity and creativity that comes when you talk to people from other industries and other backgrounds.” Rodrigo Cintra “We have an initiative known as Update Recall, where we deliver a TED-style talk to alumni on a theme’s applications to business, such as the metaverse for example, that is perhaps 10 to 13 minutes in length. We send alumni this video with some links for those who want to know more, so a link to an introductory article and another to one that is more scientific. “We also include a list of programmes or courses for those who want to go deeper. We don’t just include the courses we have, but also those from other institutions or the ones where we think, ‘This is cool’. We put those in there because it’s about supporting their careers, not selling more. That makes it engaging because they know we’re delivering the best information and options we can and not just trying to sell them something else.” Looking to the future and the changing world of work, what are the key risks and opportunities facing business schools? Rodrigo Cintra “Business schools are at risk of losing relevance in the way we are teaching and that’s linked to the change of generation. Usually, talking about generational traits is more of a marketing thing, but
24 | Ambition | OCTOBER 2023
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