Technology: The virtual classroom

Continual advances in technology are changing the ways in which MBA students are being taught, says Nic Paton

I'm not sure I would want to be quoted on this, but I've only been to the library once," says Jason Millard, director of operations at Dutch bank Rabobank International, who started an executive MBA at London's Cass Business School in February.

As it's clearly a sensitive subject, let's emphasise straight away that Millard is not shirking his studies, far from it. Rather it's because Cass, like many business schools, has invested a great deal of time, effort and money in new technologies that are changing how MBA students are taught, do their research, communicate and access information.

As Millard explains: "I can access everything I need through the internet tools they have provided. I can download everything and save it as a soft copy so I don't have to spend hours sitting by the copier."

In Cass's case, beyond online databases the technology on offer includes video-based conferencing, tutorials and lectures through a system called Adobe Connect Pro, as well as video streaming and audio-enhanced lectures. Students can work in smaller groups within video meeting rooms and the school is even experimenting with e-books.

For Millard, the Connect Pro system in particular has made a big difference. "You can see people through the webcam, you can put documents up, write over them and add your comments. It is all recorded so if you want to refresh your memory at a later date, or you can't make that particular session, you can do so," he says.

New technologies are an increasingly important part of the MBA landscape, agrees Steve Coppin, head of IT at Oxford's Saïd Business School. One elective it offers, for instance, gives students access to a simulated stock exchange. Students practise trading in, say, derivatives, equities or a currency and are marked on how they do.

"We use the same software that real traders are taught with when they are being recruited. So it is reasonably realistic but quite stylised," explains Coppin.

One MBA student who put this training to good use is former investment manager Yikai Wang, 27, who graduated last month and is now working for City hedge fund Albany Partners.

"Having access to the trading simulation was helpful. You can learn the theory in the classroom, but being able to do practical simulation gives you a much better understanding of how the whole market works," he says.

Cambridge's Judge Business School is using an economics simulation tool called LiveEcon for its MBA students. While it is well known on pure economics courses, Judge is the first to use it on the MBA.

A key element is a tool called U-Drive-It! that allows students to manipulate economic models, explains Jochen Runde, co-author of LiveEcon.

"The beauty of this is that for a subject like economics there will normally be lots of charts and models. In a book you might get a chart with arrows. With this you can actually see the bits moving," he says.

"Students can manipulate the models and put in their own assumptions so they can see the consequences of, say, increasing an interest rate or the money supply or pushing up an exchange rate."

Technology brings continents together. This autumn, for example, MBA students from Audencia Nantes School of Management and their counterparts at Wharton, the American business school, will work together on the multicultural aspects of management via transatlantic videoconferences.

The danger is that academics become seduced by the very newness of the technology and forget the basics, cautions Russell Altendorff, director of London Business School's information systems division. One of the most important parts of any good MBA programme, after all, is the interaction between students and tutors, the lively debate and the bouncing about of ideas.

"Technology should support the learning process, not be a substitute for it," he emphasises.

"In some top business schools, professors say they do not want people using laptops because it takes away from the face-to-face interaction. One professor told me he did not like looking up and seeing 60 blue-lit faces staring out of the gloom."

Nevertheless LBS has also invested heavily in virtual learning. "Our portal is not just a website, it is a mechanism through which students can access more than 110 electronic data feeds. We spend more than £1m a year supporting those feeds," says Altendorff.

The changing nature of the MBA, with more students studying remotely or part-time while juggling a day job, makes it vital that they have access to more than just a physical library, agrees Andrew Mechelewski, manager of Ashridge Business School's virtual learning resource centre.

"A lot of our MBA students tend to use our information databases for project benchmarking and personal development. We also have about 180 corporate clients that use it as an online library."

But it is important that schools not only give students the technology but also show them how to make the best use of it, emphasises Professor Clive Holtham, professor of information management at Cass.

For a generation of managers who have grown up with Google, it can come as a bit of a shock to be faced with a vast online journal database, he points out.

"On of the first things we do is an exercise on how to use a high-quality online resource. It is about un-learning Google," he explains.

'Having something like this has been really helpful'

Former Intel systems analyst Divya Kesavan, 26, started the Judge Business School MBA last month and has been using the LiveEcon system.

"I have a background in technology, so economics is new to me and, if I am being honest, I have found it quite difficult. But having something like this has been really helpful.

I've had no problem using it. It is not too complex and there is not too much jargon. The main advantage is that you get the same material as in the books, but then through the U-Drive-It! section you can play around with it.

The sorts of things we have been doing so far include looking at demand and supply; changing demand in, say, a pizza business to come to an equilibrium point and then continuing to shift it to see what happens.

In the books, the graphs are, of course, all two dimensional and you cannot change them. But with this you can remodel them, you can make them do things. It's pretty cool. It's also a great way of learning about something."