After four years of converting in-person programs to virtual formats during the pandemic, schools have returned to normal, but with the lessons learned from this experience. They now have business programs with both modalities and much more advanced technology.
Although the demand for in-person Master of Business Administration (MBA) courses has returned to the normality that was recorded pre-pandemic, the virtual alternative is here to stay thanks to the various benefits recorded in the last four years for both students and educational institutions.
This format has allowed business schools to expand their market in the region and internationally, develop new technological tools and adapt their teaching methodologies to this system.
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Although this type of program was timidly appearing in Latin American business schools before the outbreak of COVID-19 in the world, there was still no certainty that it would be well received by the target audience, especially when talking about emblematic master's degrees such as the MBA.
However, during and after the pandemic, b-schools found that trust in virtuality was increasing, cemented by the increasing success of the format, given its flexibility in time and space and the guarantee of receiving a personalized and quality education.
This is the case of the Mexican EGADE Business School – with experience in virtual education prior to the pandemic – which has since offered both an in-person and remote MBA. Now, they also offer flexible specialization programs in both modalities.
Horacio Arredondo Villalba, dean of EGADE Business School, says that “flexibility is still valued, although returning to in-person classes was very hard. Online formats returned to pre-pandemic sizes, but there is greater openness to having online experiences, so many things that we implemented during the pandemic have remained.”
The Peruvian Pacífico Business School (PBS), for its part, has programs with remote and in-person versions, which are mainly adapted to the public they are aimed at. Giuliana Leguía, director of the PBS, explains that the pandemic “allowed us to innovate with the master's degrees, but especially with the MBA, because we were able to develop new modalities, one that was totally virtual and the blended one, which was very popular at the time. We were also able to incorporate new methodologies and technological tools that helped with remote learning.”
And over the years, the remote format has already gained the support of the respective managers, students and academics. “A review of the MBA programs offered in Colombia shows that around 30% are online programs and the rest are face-to-face programs.
In the case of the latter, a formula that has proven to be effective is not having face-to-face classes every week. Even though classes do not occur every week or every day, these programs are still classified as face-to-face,” explains Sonia Camacho, academic vice-dean of the Faculty of Administration of the Colombian University of the Andes (Uniandes).
On the other hand, the difficult balance between personal life and work is another issue to consider when following a remote program and one of the factors that has driven and maintained its demand.
According to a study on online MBAs by the market research firm Hamilton and Emagister, the search engine for courses, masters and postgraduate degrees, work-life balance is the main motivation for students when choosing remote education. Proof of this is that 73.2% of the students surveyed choose this modality to combine work and studies, while 13.5% say they do so to balance family and studies. A trend that demonstrates the interest in finding a solution that allows them to continue training without having to stop working or looking after their family.
Other strengths of online training in the business field, according to the specialists interviewed for this article, are the active role of the student during the program, the updating of materials, networking with people who are in different parts of the world and the promotion of skills related to independent work, time management or flexibility.
In general terms, the use of digital platforms in this type of postgraduate programme also has a positive impact on students, reinforcing their level of self-discipline.
Internationalization
In addition to the benefits of the flexibility and costs involved in these programs, several schools were able to expand their market within their cities, in the region and internationally.
Both EGADE and the Pacífico Business School agree that one of the most attractive aspects has been internationalization. In our case, says Leguía, “the remote modality allowed some small schools, like ours, to be known and adopted by students from the city of Lima and the interior, but also from the entire region. This gave us the opportunity to internationalize the master's degrees, with foreign professors and increase the ratio of international students.”
Currently, the director explains, “professionals can choose which modality best suits their needs. This has allowed us to internationalize our programs, not only because we can more easily adopt international professors, generate joint programs with other business schools or share students from different countries in a virtual classroom, but it has also allowed us to increase the number of international students who enroll in our programs.”
As a result, EGADE offers internationalisation opportunities where students, for example, can take a class with international schools, have guest professors and foreign experts, and develop projects with other schools. These opportunities, according to the dean, “are still valued by students.”
And Arredondo adds: “Now there is a kind of additional level of online internationalization. Before, it was not offered, in part, because students did not see it as a viable option. Instead, now they do see it as a possible alternative.”
Advances that remain
During this time, schools have invested in technological infrastructure and made changes to their teaching methodology. They have also understood that they must modernize as much as the virtual experience requires.
Horacio Arredondo explains that, during the pandemic, “we understood that many of the practices that we could do virtually to maintain tension are more complex than being in the classroom.”
And, for this reason, they were forced to generate more elaborate work dynamics that were added to the already traditional case discussion, and to develop new tools. They have a technology called Professor Hologram, which has been around for six years, and which allows users to listen to and interact in real time with a professor, who is projected in two-dimensional real size.
“This, for example, allows us to have guests who are not present in the city, but who can be there remotely, without any problem. This is because the technology is much more established,” says Arredondo.
At Uniandes, these methodologies have been refined over time to give students a greater role in their learning process. “With the arrival of this program offering, the activities carried out in face-to-face class sessions are being reconsidered, giving greater value to collaborative work between students, where the professor plays a more facilitating role and guides the learning process,” Camacho points out.
For this reason, Camacho explains, Uniandes' digital infrastructure has been modernized and now has "a pioneering interactive virtual experience room in Colombia; a laboratory to develop digital teaching materials such as videos and podcasts; the adaptation of classrooms to hold hybrid class sessions, with some participants attending in person and others virtually; the development of experiences with virtual reality and augmented reality; and changes in the technologies used for the creation of asynchronous content, including more interactive content, simulations, and gamification."
And thanks to the proliferation of remote programs, disruptions such as "the creation of boardroom experiences in virtual reality or the prospecting of possible futures also using virtual reality; the creation of simulated learning environments with gamification; the incorporation of simulators, multimedia cases or the technology developed for the interactive virtual experience room" have been carried out at the Colombian university.
Leguía, from the Peruvian PBS, explains that they have made a very large investment that has allowed them to have laboratories and spaces to generate a series of innovations in teaching, with simulators and new digital spaces for different activities.
And, at the same time, “as with all innovations, we have had to rethink the teaching methodology used, although we were already working on educational innovations. In 2018 we had already developed a methodology focused on the development of soft skills. This allowed us to adopt much more experiential methodologies that we already carried out in person, but which in this way facilitate student learning and their interaction with peers,” he explains.
Arredondo, from EGADE, adds that, in general, “the introduction of artificial intelligence is being very important in the way we teach, especially to make some types of interactions simpler.”
All of this has contributed to improving the remote experience, which requires advanced technological tools and optimal networking opportunities. This decision is in line with the need to take this type of program, which increased during the lockdown period and continues to this day.
