Technology, virtual learning driving trends for 2017
Ask anyone to predict the top trends in education and what’s driving them, and the words “technology”, “virtual” and “online” will almost certainly come up early in the conversation.
However, when asked for his top five trends in executive education for 2017, dean and director of Henley Business School, Africa, Jon FosterPedley, came up with several other less obvious indicators.
1. DELIVER THE GOODS
According to Foster-Pedley, 2017 is the year of “the science of deliverology” — that is, the science (or art, depending on your viewpoint) of delivering on goals and promises — will actually take root.
“People are tired of promises, evasions, excuses and buck-passing. And, since people make up society, business and government, the zeitgeist is ‘make it happen and make it better’,” says FosterPedley. “This year executive education will focus more on understanding systems, causes and reality. It will scrutinise and develop the art of decision making that gets results and will focus on outcomes. There will be less patience for detailed and recursive problem analysis in favour of learning-in-action and failing fast forward (that is, trying something, getting feedback quickly, and rapidly inspecting, adapting and making decisions).”
2. PROVIDE PURPOSE AND DEPTH
Foster-Pedley, who was an airline pilot and examiner and aerobatic competitor before he completed a Masters in Business Administration degree and eventually became an educator, believes local and global politics and issues of late have us “living in a paradox”.
“On one hand, we engage and invest energetically in the activities of capitalism, while on the other — increasingly anxious and full of self-doubt — we face questions about the consequences of these activities for our children and communities,” he says.
“We wonder what it all means, what the point of pursuing a career is, and why we engage in the merry-goround that is work. As a result, we’ve begun searching for greater meaning through work, and asking our employers that more of ourselves be allowed to be present at work.”
The results can be positive. By wanting to become and required (by employers) to be more innovative, engaged and conscious, we’re able to invent better solutions and operate better businesses.
“Executive education will respond to this with more reflection and clarity about the meaning of work and the role of work as a secular contributor to our spiritual lives,” says Foster-Pedley.
3. EMBRACE A BLENDED APPROACH
With technology connecting everyone all the time, the idea of achieving work-life balance is passé. It has been replaced by work-life blending. Correspondingly, people are reassessing their understanding education, looking at what can be learned where, in which way and via which medium to best suit their lives both at work and at home.
Blended learning typically combines online digital media with traditional classroom teaching methods. It provides greater flexibility in terms of time, place and pace, which is particularly useful for executives who need to juggle their time to accommodate work, studies and family.
“Learning will happen in new ways, in new places and in new constructs that create a rich experience of multilevel and layered learning rather than seeing students predominantly seated in workshop rooms and lecture theatres,” says Foster-Pedley.
4. REINVENT EDUCATION WITH NEW CONFIGURATIONS AND PARTNERS
As the boundaries of what we call executive education are challenged and existing categories collapse and blur, so will the possibilities for new configurations and partners emerge. Questions need to be asked. What is business science and business art? What matters more, an organisation or its people? How can we collaborate to accomplish and satisfy more individual and organisational needs? How can we expedite meaning? What should we learn and why is it helpful?
“The imbroglio that executive education starts to find itself in opens sensational new possibilities for learning,” says Foster-Pedley, “learning that is human and cloistered, kinaesthetic (that is, students carry out physical activities, rather than listening to a lecture or watching demonstrations) as well as static, and intelligent rather than just intellectual. Learning needs to be familyfriendly too. After all, what educator of merit creates learning that doesn’t take families into account?”
WE WONDER WHAT THE POINT OF PURSUING A CAREER IS, AND WHY WE ENGAGE IN THE MERRY-GO-ROUND THAT IS WORK
5. NURTURE CREATIVE ACUMEN
Where once the need for business acumen, shareholder value and profits drove productivity, today’s business models depend equally on creative acumen. An equal and combined focus on business and creative acumen — and all the personal and professional qualities it requires to succeed — will result in increasing demands on educators in the executive education sector. They’ll need to be more creative too.
“We need better value and solutions, and new thoughts and actions to create success,” he says. “But, importantly, that success needs to driven by humane and human-centred businesses.”