Ebrahim MohamedExecutive MBA Programme Director& Senior Teaching Fellow

Benchmarking Teaching Innovation at Imperial College Business School: with MIT-Sloan and Harvard Business School

Strategic Use of Learning Technologies at the Business School

Blended Learning CoursesThe use of blended learning, where students study part of their course online, is increasing at the School. Implementing a blended learning format on our Executive MBA programme allowed us to reach out to students across a wider geographical area. Students are required to participate in online activities before and after their visit to the campus.

Online Pre-Study CoursesStudents on management and finance programmes have varied backgrounds. We use online pre-study courses to ensure all students have the basic knowledge and skills they will require on their programme when they arrive on campus.

In-Class TechnologyWe are steadily moving towards the technology enhanced classroom' by adopting technologies such as audience response systems (or 'clickers') and automated lecture capture. For example we use the Echo 360 automated video recording system to record some of our lectures. This has a number of benefits, one of which is that being able to review recordings of lectures can help international students mitigate some of the language difficulties they face.

Supplementary MaterialsWe use computer based activities such as simulations and online tests to increase interactivity in our classes.

AdministrationPlacing course information and communications into a virtual learning environment streamlines administrationand enables students to increase time spent on learning.

Learning technology at the Business School

How can we teach students when they are not on campus?

How can we increase feedback and assessment without increasing the marking burden

for teaching staff?

How can we add more interactivity to our classes?

How can we support students whose first language is not English?

Setting the Scene

2001 heralded the start of e-learning development at the business school with an appointment of a learning technologist post and a pilot learning environment project. The pace of growth and innovation since then has been pushing forward the e-learning agenda at Imperial College.

Harvard Business School was already an established player in paper based case studies and had some electronic based content

MIT announced the OpenCourseWare (OCW) project at the peak of the stock market boom in information and communications technology sector

Setting the Scene

The benchmarking opportunity arose from a field trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts where we were able to compare and contrast approaches to teaching innovation at MIT-Sloan and Harvard Business School.

A key theme that emerged from discussion with both schools is the need to localise learning technology infrastructure (software/hardware/staff) to effectively meet local pedagogic requirements.

A clear focus at both schools was the use of learning technology to maximise the scarce resource of faculty time.

Roles in the e-learning field at Imperial are generic whereas our field-trip revealed an evolution emphasising specialisation: technical developers, instructional/graphic/interactive designers and writers.

Harvard Business School – Strategic Approach

Chief Information Officer - CIO gives strategic input on IT issues

Pedagogy drives technology

Large localized team comprising have a team of 22 Learning technologists (Generalists, interactive designers, video production, graphic designers, writers and instructional designers), 20 AV specialists and around 60 IT support staff.

Focus on student engagement

Harvard Business School - Environment

AV: High specification

Each lecture has 3 broadcast quality cameras + dedicated editing suite

Inbuilt electronic voting system to facilitate case teaching

Refit every 5 years

Technicians check equipment at start of every class

Cohorts stay in one classroom for all their classes.  Lecturers move around.

Harvard Business School - Facilitation

Aim is to have time efficient engagement with faculty -  'We drive' 

Faculty assistants work closely with faculty to incorporate e-learning

Focus is on recruiting talented staff rather than staff with direct experiencee.g., skilled and creative writers

Approach is to supplement and adapt centrally provided IT but not rely on it.  Harvard uses their own in-house developed VLE (soon to be updated). The course content is mapped closely to the timetable by design.

Harvard Business School retains IPR

Harvard Business School - Publishing

Can build a 10 hour online course in 10 hours of faculty time.

Simulations now an integral part of the Harvard teaching method – tentative strategic embrace

Some simulations are built using Forio web based simulation building tools. They develop their own and also in collaboration with Forio directly.

E-learning project initiation:1. Lecturer writes a proposal and submits it to a Research committee for approval2. If approved sent to Education Technology team to develop3. HSBP can try to make changes based of potential commercial exploitation once published4. However priority is always for use by the lecturer for the classroomThe average simulation costs around $50-100,000 to develop. Everest took 18 months to build

MIT - Sloan

OpenCourseWare (OCW) heralded as a success and has $4million ongoing funding and expect this to continue by philanthropic donations by alumniShould we open up our e-learning course material to alumni?

Approach is to supplement and adapt centrally provided IT services but not rely on it.  Centrally provided VLE is adapted and customised at Sloan

IP issues are vague

Recommendations

Approach to IT InfrastructureHarvard/MIT Sloan approach increases ability to innovate and meet student expectations. 

Organizational InfrastructureNeed to create a more formal and richer structure for learning technology team.

Executive ResponsibilityExecutive ownership of teaching technologies.  Need input at a strategic level.  Incorporate AV into teaching technology unit (TTU). 

Advisory InputSet up external advisory input to TTU.

Need to Bring IT Infrastructure to International Business Schools Standard

Harvard Business School Lecture Theatre

Harvard Video Editing Suite

MIT Trading Room

Thank You

Q&A