GME News Digest Rodney G. Alsup, D.B.A., CPA, CITP

Have you ever thought about the path learners navigate when they go from realizing their need to learn to be a loyal program supporter? When both learners and program leaders really understand the path learners follow, it’s like having a roadmap to success for both. A roadmap with interesting goals like identifying knowledge gaps, choosing a program, enrolling, and becoming a committed supporter. In the following episode, I describe six stages that most learners follow on their journey. Improving program effectiveness and reputation comes from understanding the learner journey and these stages.

This episode is based on a blog article I wrote titled, From First Encounters to Lifelong Advocacy: Navigating the Learner’s Journey in a Graduate Program – The Learner View.

Our conversation focused on:
• How the coming baby drought will affect the future of business education?
• How generational behavior will affect the future of business education?
• How changes in the behavior of the middle classes will affect the future of business education?
• How gender shifts will affect the future of business education?
• How urbanization will affect the future of business education?
• How technological advances will affect the future of business education?
• How a culture of sharing will affect the future of business education?
• How changes in the medium of exchange will affect the future of business education?

Wharton Professor Mauro Guillén, recently named dean of Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, and author of 2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything joined me to discuss how B-School deans and graduate program leaders can prepare their programs for 2030 and beyond.

Dr. Bora Ozkan, assistant professor of finance at Temple University’s Fox School of Business serves as the academic director for the school’s Online MBA and Online BBA.

 
The reason Bora is joining me today is he’s responsible for the Fox School’s first-ever Virtual Reality or VR course that's offered to their online MBA students. The course, "Fintech, Blockchain and Digital Disruption," is a seven-week course that started March 19, 2020 and ends the last week of March. Twenty students enrolled for the course. The course was designed by Bora, a team from the Fox School’s Online and Digital Learning Department and Glimpse Group, a virtual reality and augmented reality platform company.
 
I learned of the course from a US News article that I recently shared with MBA News Digest subscribers. After reading the article, I thought this would be something that MBA News Digest subscribers and podcast listeners would be interested in learning more about. I contacted Bora and he agreed to join me today for this interview. Bora, welcome.

Making graduate program management simple is almost never a consideration during the design phase of a new graduate program. Georgia State University's new MS in Human Resource Management program is an exception.
In this episode, two program faculty members discuss how the new program's design makes program management simple. Join me as we discuss how the program uses rubrics to track overall skill development progress for individual students and for the program; how metrics guide program data collection and reporting; how the program can track meta level skills by student; how the program gathers faculty input about student performance by using Qualtrics; and more.

During 2019 graduate management education was criticized for not being relevant. At the end of January, I received a press release from GSU titled “Georgia State’s Master’s in H.R. Management Responds to Emerging Business Needs.” I thought, here’s a response to that criticism, I wonder how they did it? Two GSU faculty are here today to help us understand the how.