Commentary: Action and caution needed, as business schools respond to disruption

Equally important, professors can develop students’ ability to apply their knowledge to discern underlying causes and effects, and separate them from symptoms and noise, for solution identification and application.

In this, there has been a gradual but indisputable march towards developing students’ analytical abilities and judgment, and away from the rote accumulation of knowledge.

ACTION, BUT ALSO CAUTION

Paradoxically, in a world of high tech, high touch becomes even more necessary. Rapport between professors and students to encourage idea exchange calls for humility from professors to engage and learn from students, and marry theoretical understanding with developments in a rapidly changing world.

But successful integration also requires a doubling down on research and knowledge development on the part of professors.

There is a debate that selected local universities obsess over research at the expense of teaching and let university rankings determine their research. This zero-sum view that says one must come at the expense of the other is limiting when reality shows a striking relationship among the best universities. Harvard, Stanford and Wharton are research titans yet well known for their teaching excellence.

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Research excellence feeds into quality teaching as we develop conceptual and applied knowledge on emerging business, industry, economic and societal trends within Singapore and globally. And the process of research – of exploring and discovering, of challenging our limits of knowledge, and of testing hypotheses and sharing findings – contribute to students’ learning, particularly since this journey also involves them.

READ: Time for Singapore universities to switch gears, a commentary

We bounce research ideas off students and share with them data to develop their analytics skills as students engage in primary and secondary research for their projects. In doing so, they learn to be systematic in sieving pertinent information from the noise.  

Disruption also places fresh demands on the shoulders of students, who must take on the responsibility of independently cultivating a willingness to learn and to be uncomfortably challenged. The emerging two-way street for learning is exactly that.

While these changes have important pedagogical implications, business schools have long used an interactive, discussion-oriented, case-enhanced and applied approach to developing students.

Current practices extend these trends, through using current “live” cases as problem settings and having students consider unstructured information from multiple sources, so that they recognise change and complexity as core business trends.

The nature of teaching and learning in Singapore’s business schools has changed radically, perhaps more so than is commonly recognised. One of us has not set a single examination in any class in NUS Business School in the last two decades despite having taught many different modules as a full-time member of the school.

Instead, in keeping with the focus on developing critical thinking and judgment, a wider range of interactive assessments, such as case studies, developing strategies for firms, group presentations and debates, learning journals and research practicums for firms, are used to encourage learning and application.

TECH IS STILL NASCENT

While disruption is inevitable, and the opportunities to reach non-Singapore based students multiply, it will take time, experimentation, and much learning to figure out how to harness technology to transform the nature of teaching for more effective learning.

There will come a time when location and distance will be irrelevant in the quality of learning but not yet. Technology has not advanced to the point where virtual interactions are good enough to replicate face-to-face learning and nurturing in a classroom for university courses to be fully digitised.

Only half of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) participants enrolled in a course ever got as far as watching a lecture and only a mere 4 per cent complete their course, according to a study of a million users by the University Of Pennsylvania Graduate School Of Education.

EVOLVING CURRICULUM

Evolving as signs of disruption emerge will entail that schools innovate in all aspects of education, including content, learning methods, and student experiences. Singapore’s business schools should continue to benchmark their processes and programmes against those of leading global business schools, and consult with alumni, employers and other stakeholders to understand their needs.

Beyond providing the intellectual foundations necessary for success in students’ early careers, NUS Business School reviews its programmes to equip students with the ability to learn, grow and adapt throughout their careers.

Business schools first emerged to provide skills-based teaching, but now focus on educating for careers, developing judgment for success, and building leaders for society. The shift has required development of almost all aspects of our programmes, including the incorporation of the latest academic and practical ideas and concepts.

One outcome from a recent review provides greater flexibility for students to customise their education to meet personal interests and goals, and grow and adapt. 

Students now undertake broad-based foundation studies and as much as 20 per cent of their classes from outside their faculty. They have a wider range of specialisations and electives to choose from, more advanced electives to challenge themselves, and the option of double majors and degree programmes.

Practical and experiential opportunities have also increased multiple-fold. Our more senior alumni will envy the learning experiences our current students enjoy.

The launch of programmes such as the Masters in Business Analytics, a joint endeavour with the School of Computing, is evidence of curriculum reviews among business schools. These new programmes aim to expose students to emerging technologies set to become the foundations of the future economy, such as blockchain, data analytics, machine learning and fintech, as well as aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation.

ROPING IN INDUSTRY CAPTAINS

The shortage of professors proficient in these emerging areas is a key challenge.

Business schools and universities are thus reaching out to working professionals to co-teach, and to complement the theory with practical knowledge, beyond traditional adjunct instructors teaching in the evenings. The more progressive universities are able to hire full-time industry leaders to commit to teaching as a career, even if this is not done on a full-time basis.

At NUS Business School, for example, a course on marketing entrepreneurship is taught by a senior Google executive. He is on the cutting-edge of technology and brings with him “live” cases and a wealth of experience and practical perspectives that complement the more academic approach for a well-rounded education. 

Consultants teach our consulting modules, and accounting experts various accounting modules.

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A rigorous yet dynamic curriculum – one that balances strong theoretical understanding with experiential learning, delivered on suitable teaching platforms – offers students an education that puts them in good stead to learn, develop and adapt throughout their careers.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Another challenge facing business schools is to balance theory with practice. Experiential learning is vital to complement classroom learning as it enables students to apply theory.

Many universities see internships that offer meaningful exposure as a solution and have made it compulsory for graduation, and integral to the core curriculum.

Besides internships, one of the decisions made by NUS Business School is to introduce consulting practicums for students. They consult for companies including small- and medium-sized enterprises for between six months to a year where they get deeply involved in company projects in exchange for programme credits.

Companies, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, benefit as they are usually short on funding for consultancy and business research. More than 3,000 undergraduates and MBA students have undertaken 1,000 of these projects, involving over 500 companies both in Singapore and around the world.

With the trend towards establishing start-ups upon graduation, some universities take the approach of introducing courses on entrepreneurship. Others, like NUS, build an ecosystem that is university-wide to optimise cross-fertilisation of strengths.

Block 71, the most successful Singapore start-up eco-park is an NUS creation. 

Students can take time off studies to work full-time on their innovations or to gain experience. They can also tap on an established ecosystem of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and private equity investors, as they receive support in the form of start-up grants and on-campus incubators.

LEARNING FROM OTHERS

While the world is changing, we need to respect the time-honoured principle that history is the teacher of life, and that fundamental principles in education hold true.

On the one hand, more business schools are using “live” case studies that force students to immerse themselves into on-going business events; the incompleteness, complexity, and uncertainty of information and the lack of obvious answers, mirrors the challenges that business leaders face.

But these should also complement the classic cases relevant in teaching students key principles. The combination injects an element of reality in the application of their knowledge.

Business schools organise case competitions and hackathons to encourage students to solve real business issues. 

Chulalongkorn University and Thammasat University in Thailand, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and NUS are internationally renowned for their business case competitions. Students are sent to participate in such global competitions for direct exposure to business challenges.

Exchange programmes to leading schools have also become a key element of some business programmes, with a majority of students in each cohort spending a semester or more abroad. Students regularly report that these exchanges are life-changing experiences.

Indeed, business schools and university research have faced extensive technological, financial and pedagogical disruption in recent years.

Local business schools have met these challenges by developing professors’ capabilities, by investing in technology, by working with industry, by raising funds from multiple sources, and by working with students.

This has been a model for how universities will adapt teaching to disruption. We at business schools in Singapore get this.

Ang Swee Hoon is an associate professor in the Department of Marketing and Kulwant Singh is a professor in the Department of Strategy and Policy. Both teach and research at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School. The opinions expressed are those of the writers and do not represent the views and opinions of NUS.