Cyber-Education Report Profiles Bermudian
Each Sunday evening, Bermudian Scott Pearman [pictured] joins the six other members of his executive Masters of Business Administration team to discuss their course assignments. Before getting down to work, they typically spend a few minutes chatting about their families and favourite ice hockey teams.
All are enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. But Mr Pearman lives in Bermuda, where he is chief operating officer of the hospitals board, and his team-mates are scattered across Canada from Fort McMurray, centre of the Alberta oil sands, to the prairie city of Winnipeg.
This week, Britain’s leading business newspaper “The Financial Times” reported how — with the help of sophisticated video-conferencing technology — Mr. Pearman and his fellow students form a “desktop learning team”, holding their weekly meetings and receiving about half of their course instruction online.
About 15 of the 84 students enrolled in Queen’s EMBA this year are members of online teams such as Mr. Pearman’s. The rest come together in person every second week in corporate boardrooms around the country, but take part in the same online classes as the desktop teams. Classes meet every second week, for almost the full day on Friday, continuing on Saturday morning.
“The reality is that the technology that we’re seeing factored into everyday living will have to be factored into education,” Elspeth Murray, an associate dean at Queen’s, told “The Financial Times”, citing students’ ever-growing familiarity with social media, smartphones and tablets.
Many business schools post teaching materials online. Some allow recruiters to use their video-conferencing facilities for job interviews with students. But few have gone as far as Queen’s in bringing the classroom into far-away homes and offices.
Students are increasingly willing to pay more for online tuition. Both Queen’s school in Ontario and Kenan-Flagler in North Carolina charge close to $90,000 for online programmes
Madrid’s IE Business School, Cornell University’s Johnson school, Duke University’s Fuqua school and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler school are among others that offer some form of distance learning. Cornell leases Queen’s technology, developed by Polycom, a California-based supplier of video-conferencing equipment, reported “The Financial Times”.
Doug Shackelford, an associate dean at Kenan-Flagler, says, “We believe there’s a tremendous market out there for people who have a great job and don’t want to leave it, or who live in a place where there’s not a top-tier [business] education within driving distance.”
The Queen’s programme grew out of video-conferencing facilities that the school began using in 1994. Groups of students would assemble simultaneously in boardrooms across the country.
Mr. Pearman can see his Queen’s team on his laptop during their Sunday get-togethers. For lectures, students’ screens are split between the professor and course material. Participants can raise virtual hands to ask a question, speak to the instructor through microphones and communicate with each other via instant messaging.
Mr. Pearman predicted that when his three-year-old daughter graduates from high school, “she’ll have to decide whether to go to university or cyber-college”.
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$90,000 for the program sounds abusive but like everything else, it’s what the market will bear.
Open Course Ware is where its at… and Khan Academy.