KEY FINDINGS Format of teaching • Three quarters (75%) of respondents said their Business School uses a virtual classroom, an increase from 51% in 2020. • A quarter (25%) of responding Business School leaders said that their institution is using virtual reality (VR) to teach programmes. The majority (65%) of participants indicate that this technology is being used to teach in a more exciting way. Synchronous vs. asynchronous learning • The biggest advantage of both synchronous and asynchronous digital teaching methods is seen by participants to be less travel for students, as cited by 74% of participants. • More than half (54%) expressed their belief that asynchronous digital teaching methods offer a worse experience for learners than classroom teaching. A smaller proportion (38%) said they believe synchronous digital teaching methods are inferior to classroom methods, in terms of learning experience. • Whether online instruction is asynchronous or synchronous, the biggest problem experienced by Business Schools is identifying gaps in students’ knowledge (as reported by 69% and 55% of respondents, respectively). • Lack of student engagement (64%), student connection issues (54%), and adapting programmes to suit online teaching formats (53%) are the most frequently cited challenges faced by Business School leaders when delivering online education in a synchronous format. • The vast majority (93%) of respondents said they believe that facilitators/ faculty are either ‘very satisfied’ or ‘fairly satisfied’ with the current synchronous digital teaching technologies. Impact of Covid-19 • More than three-quarters (84%) of participants said they want their Business School to retain the technology that has been implemented during the pandemic – 16% want to keep aspects of it, but none want this technology discarded altogether. • Business School leaders are also keen to keep aspects of ‘faculty teaching online’ (62%) and ‘students not coming to campus’ (65%), suggesting that their preference for the future is hybrid or blended models of learning. • More than three-quarters (83%) of Business School leaders said they believe that the pandemic has triggered major changes to their institution’s long-term strategy, while 17% said they believe that it has not. Investments • The MBA is the programme which is receiving the most funding for digital teaching methods – 83% of participants said that their Business School is investing a moderate amount or more in this programme in this way. • Providing ‘flexibility in learning’ is the most popular purpose of existing investment in relation to online learning technologies, as cited by 77% of Business School leaders. • ‘Flexibility in learning’ is also top of Schools’ minds when looking ahead to the next two years; it is cited as a priority for investment by 67% of respondents. Other high priorities include the enhancement of soft skills (cited by 57%) and student engagement metrics (45%). • The majority (82%) of Business School leaders said their School is planning to invest further in technology over the coming two years to enable online teaching.
record sessions adds value. The next most popular answer was the ability to have interactive quizzes and polls (56%). Aspects such as a shared whiteboard space and engagement metrics were deemed to add value by fewer respondents in the survey sample (cited by 34% and 24%, respectively). Planning ahead Looking to the future, participants were asked which aspects of changes implemented in the past year they wished to keep. Technology is a clear winner – 84% of participants said they plan to keep new technology adopted and none said that they plan for it to be discarded. Elsewhere, the consensus in this sample is to keep aspects of the enforced changes: 62% said they plan to keep aspects of faculty teaching online and 65% will look to keep aspects of students not coming to campus, suggesting that Business School leaders envisage the use of hybrid or blended models soon. Covid-19 has not just affected teaching methods, its impact has been wider than this. An overwhelming 83% of Business School leaders believe that the pandemic has triggered major changes to their Business School’s long-term strategy. Only 17% of participants believe that it has not.
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