ROUNDTABLE REVIEW
the new emerging generation thinks differently and we are afraid of our faculty not being able to deal with the necessary changes.” Deneise Dadd “Learners from the younger generation have a different attitude towards the environment and towards others. As business schools, we have to refocus our teaching and say ‘Members of Generation Z have completely different views. How do we deal with that?’” Aku Clemmet “A key challenge is keeping up with the pace of AI and making sure that we are giving something of benefit and workplace relevance to the student. Specifically, how we’re going to adopt AI and teach it so that the students use it intelligently. We need both us and them to work strategically with AI and not try and fight against it. “But we’ve learned since Covid that we all need human interaction because students learn so much more from it. From my programme manager’s perspective, it’s clear that students benefit so much from the individual in ways that they will not get from AI.” Rebecca Casey “We are all going to have to do a root-and-branch review of our assessments and change how we assess students because the democratisation of generative AI means that we can’t rely on out‑of-class essays anymore.” Ellie Fowler “I keep coming back to impact and asking myself, ‘How are we making sure that our learners go out and know that they’re going to be able to make a difference in their workplaces?’ This links to assessment because we need to consider whether we are evaluating what students are learning in the right way.” Eno Amasi Maycock “The changing skillsets that are needed are key but looking inwards, we also have to upskill our staff. In addition, the policies and structures within universities must be flexible and adaptable enough to enable us to change quickly. Otherwise, by the time you go through all the committees and boards, everything you’ve planned is out of date, due to the rate of change. That’s where I see the risk.” Elaine Limond “A key challenge for us internally is having the agility to meet the needs of upskilling our staff and supporting them in this process.” Geetha Karunanayake “During the pandemic, we learned a lot of new skills. But now, we are under more pressure, with lots of expectations and demands to meet. Changes taking place to organisational structures have also meant that some professional staff members have had a reduced workload, or it’s been changed to a different format, leaving others to take on more responsibilities. That’s a challenge in terms of talent management and talent retention.”
TRANSFORMATIVE SOLUTIONS
Macat provides critical thinking solutions that are designed to transform the way people learn, work and live. It offers a learning, assessment and development ecosystem to professionals and learners worldwide. This imparts the knowledge and skills that advance critical thinking with precision by placing them on a robust evidence-based learning path. It also builds a foundation on which other essential 21st-century skills can be developed.
Julie Rosborough “I don’t think business schools do enough on the mental health and wellbeing of future leaders, because if you haven’t got strong mental health as a leader, then you cannot recognise and support others. If you think about the geopolitical context, the terrible things that are happening in the world and the pandemic we’ve all been through, the mental health and wellbeing agenda is only going to get more significant. This is something that we, as educators, need to be mindful of and include. We’re all very good at things like responsible and ethical leadership, but part of ethical leadership is mental health and wellbeing.” Tom Vinaimont “One of the challenges is that business schools really need to stay flexible. We have programme modifications every year, sometimes they are only minor but it reinforces the realisation that things are changing fast. “Another challenge is encouraging our students to come back. It’s about displacing the idea that they only need one degree and then they’re set for the rest of their lives. The world changes so rapidly that they should come back to business school every so often and we need to stay flexible and give them a large range of topics to choose from. It’s exciting.” Linda Whicker “We’ve talked about lots of useful and productive things. But climate change is not separate to this – it’s integral in everything we’re doing and this is what the emerging generations care about. I don’t think we’re reflecting that very well currently in higher education at all. “We need to do more in this area, because companies have to meet all the mandatory rules that are being put in place and we already have companies asking us about carbon literacy programmes because they don’t understand it. I see embedding climate change into every single part of the programme experience and the student journey as a responsibility within the business school in particular because it has the most direct links to business.”
Ambition | OCTOBER 2023 | 25
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