Business schools face challenges of technological advances

Global business schools are seeking better ways to carry out education in a new technological environment.

Technological developments such as Massive Open Online Courses make higher education more accessible and effective for adult learners, but create challenges for business schools, such as a decrease in students and difficulty achieving differentiation in teaching processes.

"Generally, the technological environment has impacts on the whole range of activities business schools are involved in, for instance, brand building, recruiting, marketing and all types of off-campus programs," said Fiona Devine, head of the Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, who attended the 2014 Business School Dean's Workshop at Tongji University in Shanghai on Oct 11. More than 30 business school heads and representatives from worldwide institutions joined the workshop.

According to the participants, business schools are taking measures to maintain their competitiveness in the dynamic market. They are both increasing investments in new technologies and continuing to enhance the quality of their traditional forms of education.

Devine said the Manchester Business School is trying to provide both online education and face-to-face teaching for students. She also emphasized that online teaching is not a perfect substitute for traditional class teaching and the school is making efforts to improve traditional education quality.

School management teams also believed that providing classes welcomed by students is a key strategy to survive competition.

"Schools should not deliver knowledge in a repetitive way," said Edwin Cheng, Dean of the School of Business Administration with the Hong Kong Polytech University. "It is really important to understand what the students need and try to deliver lectures in the best way. Technology is the supporting tool."

In recent years, Chinese universities have been exploring possible innovations in teaching formats by offering MOOCs in major cities such as Shanghai.

It has been reported that officials from the Shanghai Education Commission are working to establish an online study platform based on the MOOCs model for primary and middle school students, to be launched later this year.

In 2013, a research center for MOOCs at East China Normal University announced an alliance of 20 prestigious high schools to promote flipped classrooms.

Education videos from the member schools will be uploaded to an online platform to be shared.

Experts said it is important for schools to increase the quality of online schools' training to serve students better.