A New Direction For Executive Education? Online Education Finds Its Place
By John Kerr -- Supply Chain Management Review, 4/1/2008
Previous page: Certification Gets Renewed Attention
In 1999 and 2000, it might have been easy to imagine that the Internet would by now be the default education channel for time-pressed supply chain leaders. “Online is good for some basics, but I'm a big believer in face-to-face interactions,” says IBM's Tim Carroll. “You need to be removed from the workplace, with the professor in the room.”
That said, there's still plenty of appetite for those basics, with the attraction that they can be absorbed at the individual's own pace and on his or her timetable. CSCMP, for example, offers 40 courses covering topics such as evaluating potential suppliers and measuring forecast error and variability; courses last from one to four hours and can be completed any time within a four-month span.
At ISM's Knowledge Center, online class offerings have been expanded to include coursework crafted with input from more than 30 organizations—such as Accenture's Supply Chain Academy—and from professional associations, industry consortia and educational institutions. “We've seen more adoption of online education,” says Terri Tracey, ISM's vice president of technology and head of its Center for Strategic Supply Leadership. “People are looking at it as a supplement to face-to-face and also as a self-paced skills refresher.” Tracey notes that more companies are interested in purchasing blocks of online courses with the idea of making those courses prerequisites for employees' performance reviews.
But some institutions have had considerable success in using online channels as more than the components of hybrid education programs for function-specific coursework. Kelley Direct, a graduate management program offered entirely on the Web by Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, has been in place since 1999, piloted with 15 students including Fortune 500 managers. Today, the program's public and corporate enrollment tops 800 students. Many are MBA programs, but Kelley Direct also offers a master of science in global supply chain management as well as certification in that topic. Online tools range from streaming video and online quizzes and exams to narrated PowerPoint presentations, simulations and podcasts.
Although the efforts are not specific to supply chain, two schools are experimenting with another dimension of the Web: virtual worlds such as Second Life. In these game-like environments, a user's “avatar”—an animation character that can be as realistic or as fanciful as the user wishes—interacts with other users' avatars for everything from lectures to one-on-one knowledge exchanges. Duke University's Fuqua School of Business recently announced a partnership with ProtonMedia, a company that “integrates Web 2.0 technologies in a business-friendly three-dimensional virtual world.” And European management school INSEAD last year launched its own “virtual campus” on Second Life. These virtual world initiatives are in the earliest stages, but their proponents believe that they will one day offer richer levels of interaction than, say, a video conference or webinar.
Continue to More Interest in Customized Programs
In this article:
- Introduction
- The State of the Classroom
- Academia Under Pressure to Deliver
- Certification Gets Renewed Attention
- Online Education Finds Its Place
- More Interest in Customized Programs
- Continuing Challenges for Exec Ed
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