MBA Propheteer #2: The online MBA is not distance education

A successful and innovative online MBA program requires a counter-intuitive philosophy about the product.

First, the term “distance education” is a misnomer.  It implies correspondence learning, lack of peer collaboration, and limited access to the faculty member – elements that describe the worst possible MBA experience.  In reality, technology closes distance and brings us closer together.  Students learn through multi-modal, multi-media interaction that, when compared with a traditional classroom experience, better customizes the presentation of material to individual learning style. 

I recently coached an online MBA team comprised of an investment banker in New York, a physician in the Midwest, a nonprofit manager in DC, and a medical device marketer in California.  The team drafted a plan to help Esperanza en Acción, a nonprofit in rural Nicaragua, gain better access to the U.S. market for the products sold by its women artisans.  All work and interaction was virtual.  The project’s impressive success underscored for me that Kelley Direct is not distance education.

Second, personal relationships are more important in the online learning environment.  Although technology makes students expect a more transactional experience, the hunger for connection with peers and faculty is just as strong.  In a traditional classroom environment, students can take personal connections for granted.  In contrast, technology must engineer the ability for students to connect with one another.  Even in virtual organizations, relationships win the day.  Enabling students to build virtual networking skills hones their ability to build relationships with people they may never meet in person.

Third, the online MBA is nota fundamental innovation - it merely represents a catch-up by business schools to the way global corporate already works. (Kelley Direct being an exception, of course, having been founded in 1999 when the idea of an online MBA seemed as farfetched and wild as Edison’s light bulb once was.)  Managers already manage projects, teams, direct reports, and their relationship with the boss virtually.  For those who work online, the concept of learning online logically follows.  While we in graduate management education scratched our heads, belly gazed, and wondered: “Can students really learn online?” – our clients, the companies, acted and mastered the art of doing business and managing organizations online.  Kelley Direct saw a market need – and met it.

Next up: New rules of engagement between students and faculty. 

Got a comment? Bring ‘em on…. Comment below or tweet me at @MBApropheteer or @KelleyDirect

By Phil Powell, Faculty Chair of Kelley Direct

Kelley Direct Online MBA Students Explore Emerging Markets in South Africa

Phil Powell, Faculty Chair of Kelley Direct

Africa offers opportunity, and that is why I am here with Dean Ash Soni, Professor Jamie Prenkert, and Kelley Direct’s executive director Terrill Cosgray, and 17 online MBA students from our program.  I teach MBA students to look not just at, but beyond the horizon, and in twenty years, Sub-Saharan Africa will be booming like China and India. 

For two days, we have had great sessions led by faculty from GIBS (University of Pretoria’s award winning business school – www.gibs.ac.za) briefing us on the peculiarities of business in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Ethnic diversity, political risk, and selling to markets “at the bottom of the pyramid” are topics of special emphasis in these emerging markets. 

Tomorrow we head to Alexandra Township to help family enterprises identify small improvements they can make in their business models.  The township is a poor community scarred by the racial discrimination of Apartheid, but it is full of new public investment and private entrepreneurship.  The consulting experience will make real the challenges and opportunities of small business in South Africa and hone the executive mindset of our online MBA students.

This trip marks a renewed emphasis of Kelley Direct on executive leadership education and management literacy within emerging markets.  Such an opportunity would not typically be associated with an online MBA program, but thirteen years of online MBA teaching experience place Kelley Direct as a global market leader in curricular innovation.  As Kelley Direct’s new faculty chair, I am proud to help lead this charge.     

- Phil Powell, Faculty Chair of Kelley Direct