How Hybrid Learning is Changing Executive Education Post-Covid

From MBAs to microcredentials, executive education is emerging from the disruption of the past two years with new learnings and ways of teaching. Jane Nicholls unearths the trends.

A hybrid world – or is it?

The scramble to move executive education courses online saw business schools improving their existing technology and adapting programs. Professor Patrick Butler, director of the Global Executive MBA at Monash Business School, thinks most schools “were heading in the direction” of online versions of their programs “but COVID accelerated it”. As well as classes, Monash had to turn its MBA’s real-life business strategy project virtual. “We had to convert what we’d always done in the field – student teams consulting with clients – to online engagement.”

Now that virtual meetings have become part of working life, these MBA client projects are today a mixture of onsite and online meetings. “We’re still understanding what hybrid models look like,” says Butler. “There are some situations where remote is more efficient but there are definitely times when face-to-face is required.”

Professor Yvonne Breyer, deputy dean at Macquarie Business School (MQBS), says the hybrid classes it now offers for its MBA are a blend of students in the classroom and virtual participants. She says it’s a challenge – a point echoed by academics at other schools. “It’s a new model of teaching. With the right technical equipment, which is very expensive, it can be done.” She says MQBS has run pilots to work out what set-ups and methods
work best. As with other schools offering hybrid, MQBS has a moderator or facilitator on hand to assist the teacher with the tech and engage the classroom’s mix of present and remote students. “It’s so important that everyone in the class can hear and see each other and has the ability to participate equally.”

As well as the extra staff to facilitate hybrid settings, all the schools interviewed reported investing heavily in tech upgrades to enable them to offer a seamless experience of hybrid classes. The ability to attend class remotely is definitely an expectation, though some schools mandate a certain level of in-person attendance.

“All courses are now offered in hybrid mode,” says Sven Feldmann, associate professor of economics and associate dean at Melbourne Business School (MBS). “It means more flexibility and allows students to better manage their work, life and study balance. But the interaction is not quite the same as if you were in the classroom – if too many students are remote, the classroom experience begins to decay.” MBS aims to have most students in the room and only a few online and expects each student to attend at least 70 per cent of classes in person. “We want that lively classroom – that’s where sparks fly. That’s what ignites the fire and deepens the learning.”

Professor Guy Ford, director of the MBA program at The University of Sydney Business School, is passionate about the superiority of face-to-face teaching. “An MBA is about skills building and learning from the network. You can learn to read a balance sheet online – that’s just knowledge transfer – but if you want to build skills you have to be together. We have coaches who show you skills, such as how to have a confrontation. You do it, you get instant feedback – and repeat. That’s hard to do online.”

His school does not offer a completely online MBA. “There’s scope for online products, for knowledge transfer, but not to compromise the face-to-face MBA, for which we have a waiting list.”

He estimates that 75 per cent of the students are back in the classroom, with hybrid still offered to cater for others. “When we take a break, there’s chatter and noise in the room and they’re all talking together. The people online are not getting that ability to talk to others and form those relationships.”

Equally importantly, Ford says he’s noticed knowledge gaps in the online cohort. “I’ve recently been marking work and many people who have opted to be online have missed critical things. I think when you’re viewing at home, you’re easily distracted. It’s a three-hour class and even if you’re listening or asking questions, it’s passive. In the room, I can read the body language and pick up the pace or slow down depending on what I’m seeing in front of me.”

Commercialising innovation

Entrepreneurship is a huge part of an MBA. “Monash now has Commercialisation of Technology as a subject in our Global Executive MBA (GEMBA),” says Butler. “We undertake projects on behalf of companies who have genius boffins and add tremendous value by developing business models and go-to-market strategies.” When GEMBA students take their core learnings to their final global business project, they choose from digital transformation, advanced manufacturing or life sciences. “Students undertake live projects for businesses – from global corporations to early-stage startups – off the back of studying design thinking, strategy, commercialisation and entrepreneurship.”

The University of Sydney Business School’s Ford says he’s seeing more executives doing MBAs hungry to get access to discoveries in science, health and engineering that are happening inside universities. “I run workshops, for example, in nanoscience. We pair groups of MBAs with scientific or research teams and the MBAs jump at that.” He says MBA students go on to sit on advisory boards or even become investors and co-founders. He believes the pandemic escalated breaking down the silos between academia and industry. “There’s a perception that universities have walls around them. Business schools can facilitate bringing together researchers and scientists. When scientists and researchers are going for government medical research grants, half of it has to be a business plan and they don’t know how to do that and they don’t have the time. That’s where collaborations are forming with our MBA students.”

International is back

After the COVID pause, MBAs that offer overseas exchange programs are back in full swing. “We have exchange relationships with some of the best business schools around the world,” says AGSM’s Wailes, adding that participants do two terms in Australia “and then one on exchange”. The school changed the start date of its full-time MBA to May. “That timing works better for our Northern Hemisphere partners so we can offer more exchange programs. The response has been great.”

While nothing beats actual travel, the rise of virtual appearances has broadened the opportunity to bring in experts from around the world, says MQBS’s Breyer. “We do it on a regular basis and it’s become acceptable to do it via Zoom.”

Online learning has opened up international companies for Monash MBA students to do their real-life client strategy project, says Butler. “When we got used to working in a Zoom environment, we started finding new opportunities,” he says, pointing to a partnership with a medical devices company in Singapore. “We’re working on using AR and VR to train surgeons in robotic surgery. It allows us to access practice-based projects overseas and we’ve done them in a number of countries – it’s opened up the world.”

Self-paced learning

Breyer says MQBS is working on accommodating different learning styles, paces and levels of prior knowledge. “We’re trying to crack that nut to help people study in a much more personalised way,” she says. “We have intensive modes and so forth but we’re doing a lot of work on finding ways to help people accelerate their studies or slow them down.”

Privately owned Torrens University Australia introduced on-demand classes and assessments during COVID, with regional support hubs to take care of its many offshore students. “We will stay on-demand forever,” says Linda Brown, president and CEO of Torrens. “When students believe they are ready to take the assessment, they don’t have to wait for everybody else. It’s much more about being designed around you.”

A short-course revolution

“We’ve turned 180 degrees in the way we deliver our short courses,” says Professor Nick Wailes, director of the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) at UNSW Sydney. Prior to the pandemic, it had small face-toface classes, which were modified for virtual delivery. “A whole day sitting on Zoom would kill most normal humans,” says Wailes. Now short courses are “a two-week learning journey – a combination of self-directed activities, webinars and online discussions to tease out the themes and apply them. It’s been a revolution.”

AGSM and other schools offer customised courses for corporate clients. Wailes says those clients are “incredibly happy with the virtual delivery model”. Remote gives big companies the opportunity to connect people from across the organisation and spreading the course out gives students the opportunity to apply their learnings at work. “Then you come back and discuss it and get feedback. It’s a great learning circle – we always emphasise the importance of putting theory into practice in management education and this virtual model works even better than the traditional one.”

Pre-pandemic, the Crawford School of Public Policy at Canberra’s Australian National University only offered face-toface training, with most participants coming from the government sector. With no virtual option, lockdown meant courses simply stopped so it began building resources to take courses online. “The feedback has been amazing,” says Kali Madden, manager of executive education, who led the change. “In the first few months after we went online in late 2020, we already had participants from 14 countries. These were people who could never have come to Canberra to do a one- or two-day executive education course. Now 95 per cent of our customers are requesting fully online courses – it’s transformed our business.”

Supporting lifelong learning

Schools are going out of their way to maintain strong connections with their MBA alumni long after graduation, often by way of free courses.

At The University of Western Australia (UWA), MBA graduates can return and take one unit a year at no cost. “It might be a new elective that didn’t exist when they did their MBA – and they don’t have to do the assessments,” says Professor Allan Trench, director of MBA programs at the UWA Business School. “It’s taken us a couple of years to fine-tune the system but it’s proving very popular.” He says there are some new online units that are easy fits as capacity isn’t a problem. “Leadership in Maintenance is a really phenomenal new one, which we produced in partnership with support from BHP.”

The UQ Business School at The University of Queensland is also offering its MBA community complimentary courses. “We’ve devised a couple of short programs to help students and alumni look at how they might transition their careers,” says Dr Nicole Hartley, MBA director at the school. After the pandemic, the number of students looking to move into other sectors has risen from 60 to 85 per cent, she says. “Our online course, Accelerate Your Career, has been really successful and will run two or three times a year.”

Try before you buy

Taster courses – either for free or certificate subjects that can be counted towards an MBA – are popular across business schools. This year, MBS introduced Business Essentials, a core MBA subject that can also be taken alone. “It’s a whirlwind tour through the different areas of business study,” says Feldmann. “It lets students dip their toe into strategy, operations management, marketing and organisational behaviour. It gives them a sense of what will be covered if they complete an entire MBA and also gives them skills they can apply in their job right away.” He says a lot of students who sign up for the taster also sign up for the MBA, with credits already on board.