STRATEGY
KEY FINDINGS The purpose of the business school • 58% of business school leaders believe their primary customer to be students, and 33% think the main customer is society itself. • 65% say teaching and learning is their priority for students at their institution. • 80% believe business schools are under pressure to change their value proposition and business model. • 54% believe the role of business schools is to develop and nurture responsible managers. User experience of business schools • 58% of business school leaders believe their business school’s offering meets student expectations to a great extent. • 29% of business school leaders who use a learning management system (LMS) believe the user experience of their online platform should match, to a great extent, those of commercial websites such as social media platforms or online shopping websites. • 24% of business school leaders who use an LMS think that their online platform matches the user experience of these platforms to a great extent. • 29% think that students expect LMS’s to meet the standards of commercial platforms to a great extent, and 50% think students only somewhat expect LMS platforms to meet the standards of social media platforms or e-commerce websites. Personalisation • 72% of business school leaders believe their institution provides a personalised experience for their students. A quarter (25%) believe this is not the case, and 3% are unsure. • 43% say that the most personalisation currently on offer to their institution’s students is in the area of teaching and learning, while 21% say that the most personalisation is in the area of careers support. • 88% agree that personalising the learning experience of their students is something that will grow in importance over the next five years. • 88% think the most important outcome of personalisation is enabling students to achieve the most from their business school experience. Online and hybrid learning • 80% of business school leaders said their institution offers online courses and degrees, while 18% say they do not currently offer any online learning. • 38% strongly agree that offering online courses and degrees will be the norm in the next five years. • 86% of leaders’ schools are offering a combination of in-person instruction and online instruction (some in-person and some online). Micro-credentials and professional lifelong learning • 50% of business school leaders say their school offers micro-credentials. • 79% say their school offers micro-credentials for standalone modules; 39% offer them for stackable modules which lead to a degree, and 32% offer them for attending events or webinars. • 25% of business school leaders would go so far as to say that micro-credentials represent the future of business education, while 6% believe micro-credentials are just a passing phase. • 35% see micro-credentials provided by companies such as LinkedIn as a threat to how their business school will operate in the next five years.
You might see a second layer, where people experiment much more with microcredentials and other forms of skills-based learning. And there might be a third layer of institutions which stop doing MBA-level programmes altogether because the technology companies that offer freebies are going to take away that stuff from them. It could be an interesting schism for the business that we’re all in.” “As a university, we don’t want or need to be all things to all men, we want to know what we are good at and how we add value for our clients. Our strength is in developing the critical thinking needed to make decisions and solve complex problems. We purchase from platforms such as LinkedIn Jacqueline Bagnall , MBA Programme Director, University of Exeter Business School learning, and provide all of our students with access to that short-course platform. This enhances the academic teaching, and allows us to develop knowledge, skills and behaviours. We very much see ourselves as skilled curators of multiple strands of learning. If I’m teaching something around leadership, and I know there’s some technical skill that a student might need, I can direct the students to YouTube or LinkedIn to find something of relevance. It seems that in a busy, digital world, people now want “just-in-time” learning because that’s the point at which it’s most absorbed and applicable. Part of my role is to be the curator that brings multiple sources of knowledge together, and to help executives put meaning around it. I think that’s where we’re adding the value: asking questions, using critical thinking tools and
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Ambition | BE IN BRILLIANT COMPANY
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