A word of introduction On March 11th, FULL FABRIC decided to go into full remote mode for an undetermined period of time, as most of Europe prepared for a lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The past few days had seen an almost palpable shift in the air, as what felt like a giant wave loomed over us. It was dreamy at first, distant and perplexing – but also unavoidable. Consequently, tangible steps had to be taken.
On April 22nd, FULL FABRIC hosted a webinar in which six higher education professionals took to the virtual stage to talk about how their institutions are coping with the impact of COVID-19. Each shared their thoughts on online learning, enrolments and what they think the future of higher education will look like following health crisis.
As universities respond to the COVID-19 outbreak by closing campuses and shifting to online forms of distance learning, many institutions and educators are scrambling to develop online engagement plans. In this repost, Martin Weller (Professor of Education Technology at the Open University) brings together a number of useful for resources for anyone looking to develop online learning courses and questions why it has taken the current crisis for distance learning to be taken seriously.
In light of the fourth industrial revolution and with the pace of technological innovation moving as quickly as it is, the employees of today and tomorrow will be expected to develop existing skills and learning new ones throughout their career.
University departments launch new programmes for a number of reasons; to keep up with the pace of change and innovation in their subject field, to replace a course that has lost its relevance or to make learning more flexible and accessible for students.
Higher education marketers, we’re curious: how do you segment your audience? We’re assuming that location, field of study and lifecycle stage (i.e. candidate, student and alumni) play a big part. But perhaps you’re also one of the increasing number of marketers who, drawing on the wealth of data out there today, are layering attitudinal and behavioural insights on top of traditional demographic data create more nuanced audience personas.
Jordi Diaz is Associate Dean of EADA Business School and Director of the Executive Academy, a reflective and empowering development programme for senior teaching and learning professionals. The Executive Academy is part of EFMD Global Professional Development and is an international initiative with cohorts in Europe, Asia and the Americas. During the programme, participants create a personal development plan and a capstone project for their institution. We recently caught up with Jordi to find out more about the course and his role as director.
It’s nearly 2020 - can you believe it? We don’t know about you, but the Millennium only feels like yesterday. And smartphones; when did they sneak in?! As we look forward to the next ten years of innovation, we thought an article focusing on the generation who will “come of age” in it would be an appropriate way to mark the occasion.
Lurlene Duggan is the Chief Learning Officer at Microsoft Western Europe, responsible for landing the required curriculum for the entire Microsoft community - employees, customers and future generations - to align with the organisation's mission to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. During this interview, Lurlene talks about the importance of allowing people time to learn and share their learnings, highlights some of the successful partnerships that Microsoft has with leading universities and tells us how Microsoft is preparing itself and its partners to cope with a future capability deficit in the workforce.
