Online MBA Programs: What Professionals Think

Will Geoghegan and Trent Williams of Indiana Kelley teach in the school’s KelleyDirect online program

VER MAS ABAJO 

Ask the business school teachers who teach MBA students in traditional and virtual classrooms if they prefer one or the other and get some interesting answers.

What is it like to teach in an online MBA program? Is it so rewarding for a teacher to work with students through the Internet instead of a physical class? Is it more difficult to teach business in a virtual environment? How to lead a case study discussion in an online class?

We recently posed these and many more challenging questions to two faculty members at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, Trent Williams and Will Geoghegan, and we got some surprising answers recently.

FROM THE DARK DAYS CHATROOMS ROOMS AND DISCUSSION TO LIVE ONLINE CLASSES AND IMMERSIONS IN PERSON

Geoghegan, an assistant professor of administration and entrepreneurship, has been teaching online courses for almost a decade, beginning with what he calls “the dark days of chat rooms and discussion forums.”

Williams, an assistant professor also in administration and entrepreneurship, is a relative recently arrived at the online academy, who recently completed his first year in the virtual classroom.

In KelleyDirect’s online offering in Indiana, both teach J501 Developing Strategic Capabilities, the seven-week program strategy course that provides the basic strategy frameworks employed by companies around the world and employs cases in such popular businesses as Tesla, Warby Parker, Spotify, Lego, Trader Joe’s and Pixar.

The biggest misperception about online teaching is that it is largely about wandering through a recording studio, recording your classes, pressing play and walk way.

“I think some people assume you’re going to record your videos and then maybe update them ten years later,” says Williams. “That assumption is incorrect, we think about how we can use video to communicate the information that is best communicated in that format.

‘STUDENT DELIVERIES ARE NOT IN A BLACK HOLE OR NOT BE GRADUATED BY A TA’

“The second misperception is that there is no interaction with the students,” he says. “You send it to the ether, and at the other end, the students send a report and rate it. People ask me: ‘Rate this?’ No, we have interaction with our students. We learn their names.

We talk with them through videoconferences or phone calls during office hours. The assumption that online teaching is stagnating is something we have tried to challenge. “

Geoghegan adds: “When people say that this is an easy concert, if you do a class online correctly, you have to dedicate time and effort.

 If the students are putting a lot of energy and commitment into the course, we must move forward. above. Your deliverables do not go through a black hole or are qualified by a TA. “

But there are clearly differences in the approach that a teacher should take to teach a subject online. Many online MBA programs are typically composed of three parts: Synchronous classes that require students and teachers to be online at the same time in live sessions.

 Asynchronous classes that are essentially pre-recorded videos. And in-person dives that bring students together on a campus or in a different location, be it Silicon Valley or Shanghai.

300 VIDEOS, CLASS LIVE WEEKLY LINE AND SCHOOL OFFICE HOURS

KelleyDirect, for example, has a library of almost 300 videos, most of them five minutes long. There are also weekly live online classes, faculty office hours, Connect Weeks in person once a year on the IU Bloomington campus and in-person immersions worldwide and nationally.

In general, students take ten basic courses in the online program, each with between 20 and 30 videos. “They are carefully organized into playlists so that the concepts come together,” explains Williams.

“For the corporate strategy, there are a few minutes of video to explain the content and then the second video shows two MBA students interacting in a practice case that the online students would have read with the assigned questions.

Then there would be a follow-up video, immersing yourself in theory and frames. And then a video on how those frameworks can be applied to their own organizations. Each video has its own purpose. “

Adds Geoghegan: “We put everything that students can digest or consume asynchronously in those videos and then we leave the classes live to be as attractive and productive as possible.