that’s not to say that we won’t have different levels of service or provision for different audiences.” David Kalisz , Dean of Expert Programmes, Paris School of Business “We’re not planning to change the programme completely to make it online, but we are thinking about developing a parallel programme that, in some form, would be a hybrid programme; a part of it would be in online mode and a part of it would be face to face. We see this change in education and there is no turning back to 2019; some modes of education will stay with us for a longer time. Some skills could be acquired online. It’s doable at a much lower cost, but obviously there are some competencies that cannot be done through the internet.” Donald Lancaster , MBA Director, University of Bath School of Management “We have a brand-new School of Management building on campus, and I am creating a metaverse version of that building. We will use this metaverse building for conferences, open days and for recruitment, but we don’t see it as a replacement for in-person learning. Although we will keep an open mind, we are not planning on doing any teaching in the metaverse.” Julio Villalobos , Director, EMEA CXO Strategic Industry Advisor for Education, Salesforce.org “As an industry, we have moved from being almost 100% on a physical campus before Covid-19, to suddenly having to move to a 100% online mode. Now we are evolving and shifting towards a hybrid model. Each institution is developing this “hybrid concept” with a unique approach. However, what we all agreed on is the concept that we all have to provide a seamless student experience throughout the entire student journey and lifelong learning path. In this hybrid ecosystem, technology will be a key enabler to generate this experience.”
creating debate and discussion. It is a case of knowing where you fit in the picture, that’s the key.” Dan Pearson , Director of Academic Services, Warwick Business School “One thing we decided on a number of years ago is that any MBA alumni can come back and undertake two MBA modules with us. This enables us to provide them with an opportunity to continue learning and applying their knowledge back into the workplace, expand their networks with our current MBAs, and exposes them to further opportunities for learning in our suite of post-experience programmes.” Part Three: Will more schools be investing in virtual campuses in the coming five years? Jenny Britton , Head of Executive Development, University of Edinburgh Business School “I’m going to be a bit provocative, but if we fast-forward a decade, will we have the luxury of being able to afford to be in-person all the time, particularly for short courses? In the context of national and institutional commitments to reduce carbon emissions, we might have to accept the need to concentrate more of our in-person efforts on local audiences, and make the most of technology and partnerships to help us achieve our global reach. It will depend on what the world looks like, and I think it’s very easy to plan for the world that we have now, but I wonder if, as a sector, we need to be thinking about what is the world going to look like in 2050; what’s our role in that and work back from there? We have a lot of virtual presence but we don’t have plans to create a separate virtual campus at the moment. We don’t make a distinction in terms of who is physically present on campus, and who is not, I think partly for reasons of networking, and building a unified sense of community, but
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