York’s Schulich School of Business was among the best practice medal winners in the field of e-Learning at a recent awards ceremony held in Anaheim, California. The award was for Best Practices for Internal E-Learning for Schulich’s use of the NewMindsets second generation e-learning system/management skills content for MBA students. Other award recipients in the Internal E-Learning category included Cisco Systems, Avis Europe, University of Toyota, IBM and Lockheed Martin.
Schulich”s innovative online approach to leadership and management skills development integrates learning in the classroom, team project discussions, course-wide discussion forums and reflective personal learning. The NewMindsets online learning helps students apply all their learning to specific problems through worksheets and exercises built into each learning resource.
“NewMindsets partnered with us in developing and delivering a world-class on-line system to support blended learning in our core MBA program,” says Patricia Bradshaw, Schulich”s MBA program director. “It”s helped to put our ”four-courses-in-one” approach to leadership and management skills development at the forefront of management education worldwide. The quality and depth of learning produced by the NewMindsets system continues to exceed all expectations.”
Bradshaw also noted that the NewMindsets “approach has increased our return on technology investments and resulted in profound student learning at a graduate and executive level.” The NewMindsets software is also used in the Joint Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA program.
Between September and December 2001, the NewMindsets system had 4,860 logons for 17,716 hours – an average of 3.6 hours per use. Similar results are being produced this year. Schulich is extending use of the system to provide learning support throughout the MBA program, including the launch of a customized application of the NewMindsets “Management Survival Kit” for MBA students working together in teams to conduct strategic analyses of real-world organizations.
“The Management Skills Program at Schulich provided a crucial test of the NewMindsets system in practice, and it”s great to see the school”s pioneering efforts in blending e-learning with classroom education being recognized,” says Gareth Morgan, distinguished research professor at Schulich, and Chairman of NewMindsets Inc.
“Research shows that over 80 per cent of learners prefer non-linear approaches to learning. Our experience with the ”second generation” approach at Schulich, and at our corporate sites, is that if you can create a structured environment in which this can happen – for example by linking the learning to specific objectives – “it”s possible to create major new value for the learner.”
The Excellence in E-Learning Awards ceremony, now in its sixth year, is presented by brandon-hall.com, the e-Learning industry”s leading research and consulting firm, and Online Learning Magazine. This year, 142 entries were submitted to the overall competition. Entries were evaluated by more than 98 judges with expertise in instructional design and on-line or multimedia training and internal organizational e-Learning.