Industry: Academic institution dedicated to business education
Scope of Services and Products: Offers online management development courses and customized e-learning blended solutions to corporate clients
Estimated Number of Employees: Standing and affiliate faculty: 145 Visiting faculty: 46Staff members: 616
Year e-Learning Introduced: 2000
Offices and Locations: INSEAD has twin campuses in Singapore and Fontainebleau, France
Estimated 2002 Revenues: Non-profit institution
Web Site: www.insead.edu/
e-Learning capability is employed primarily in executive education through INSEAD OnLine at:www.inseadonline.com
Number of e-Learning Courses in Entire Curriculum: 13
INSEAD OnLine was established as a separate legal entity in September 2000 to explore the opportunities offered by e-learning, to innovate in leveraging INSEAD knowledge and research for corporate clients, and to advise a strategy and approach to e-learning at INSEAD, a leading global business school.
INSEAD OnLine began with three overarching mission objectives:
Innovate traditional learning methods with blended learning
Provide access to INSEAD and its professors via off-campus learning programs
Motivate managers and strengthen global networks
Focusing on existing corporate clients, the objective of INSEAD Online is to build expertise in providing executive education solutions that go beyond the boundaries of a formulaic one-week experience on campus.
In serving its corporate clients, INSEAD is dedicated to establishing and supporting global learning networks in all of its initiatives.
Global companies must quickly develop management capabilities on new concepts and changing issues, rapidly cascading these messages to all the other managers in a global context without the delays and obstacles inherent in limits to time and geography.
Existing corporate clients want off-campus access to the teaching and learning available through INSEAD’s faculty and research.
The traditional approach of week-long, face-to-face learning programs for managers and executives was inadequate to meet the demand for rapid and deep organizational learning.
The venture into e-learning was seen as a key to extending the boundaries of learning and as a critical method to build a global network of learners and knowledge.
To bring content into an e-learning format, INSEAD OnLine engaged in collaboration with four e-learning partners and worked closely with faculty to digitize content in engaging, interactive online modules. During the first two years, content was developed in three approaches:
Stand-alone e-learning courses
Business simulations
Web-enabled collaboration platforms to support blended learning
INSEAD OnLine also engaged two technology partners in the implementation of their e-learning strategy.
Managing People/Managing Yourself
Managing People/Managing Others
Managing Technological Innovation
Supply Chain Coordination
Leadership
Assets and Liability Management
Financial Accounting for Managers
Introduction to Financial Statements
Industry Scan
Fundamentals of Web Strategies
Globalization
Managing for Shareholder Value
Customer Relations Management
After this first two years of successful innovation and experience gathering, INSEAD OnLine was integrated into INSEAD Executive Education so that a fully realized leveraged, model applying all learning and faculty resources could became the standard offering and approach to learning.
The INSEAD Corporate Blended Program is the focus of this case. The head of clinical drug evaluation in a large, multinational pharmaceutical firm became interested in fostering thought about innovation in clinical drug research. The purpose was to develop some insights and dialogue among the scientists on the innovation process and how it could be improved.
This learning program would precede a regularly scheduled monthly team meeting run by video- conference to four locations throughout the world. The virtual learning program was planned as a pre-requisite to stimulate new insights about innovative processes, and to support and enhance the dialogue during the meeting. Because the 27 scientists were located in geographically dispersed areas, INSEAD OnLine proposed a blended model approach to the learning, utilizing the Managing Technological Innovation e-learning course combined with collaboration on a Web enabled platform.
For both of the partners in this initiative the business drivers needed to be met for real success.
INSEAD OnLine is interested in consistently exploring innovations that support the INSEAD global learning networks and in meeting corporate partner requirements in ways that offer the best learning solutions.
For the pharmaceutical firm a virtual approach that leveraged the experience, insights, and network of their scientists to create new methods and processes across geographies would benefit the business in several ways:
Enhancing performance overall through a community of learning and experience
Engaging scientists in the topic of the meeting prior to the actual face-to-face time, making the meeting more productive
Improving the processes for clinical drug evaluation resulting in bottom-line results
INSEAD OnLine Business Drivers
Working with the pharmaceutical company on the blended model provided the opportunity to meet the primary business drivers to:
Create innovations in e-learning for corporate clients
Build experience in implementing e-learning solutions with INSEAD faculty and staff
Maximize and leverage corporate participants learning time
Pharmaceutical Company Business Drivers
Prior to the monthly meeting, a pre-meeting learning program was launched to:
Prompt out-of-the-box thinking
Engage the scientists in an exchange of ideas, challenges, and insights
Utilize and leverage INSEAD faculty thought leadership to provoke thinking about change and support the learning and outcomes
Prepare for a deeper discussion during the upcoming meeting
A unique aspect of the request was that the learning initiative was not conceived as a stand-alone event, but as a critical prelude to a regularly scheduled meeting. In this case, the regularly scheduled meeting fulfilled the face-to-face component of the blended model in learning and the pre-meeting e-learning aspect extended and enriched the face-to-face meeting.
INSEAD OnLine utilized the e-learning courseware and Web platform capability that had been built over the preceding two years. Combining these e-learning approaches and leveraging their experiences in applying a blended model, INSEAD worked closely with the company’s vice president of clinical drug evaluation and INSEAD faculty members to design a pre-meeting learning experience that would meet the business objectives.
The program is an example of a blended program and four different components:
Briefing: With professor and/or professional coach
Individual e-learning: Personal study of stand-alone material
Online exchange: Virtual group working and discussion
Workshop or meeting: Face-to-face session with professor
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Media and tools include: |
Vendors include: |
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• Video conferencing |
• CognitiveArts |
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• Streaming Video |
• FT Knowledge |
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• Simulations |
• ICUS Software Systems |
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• Live e-learning |
• Academee |
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• Web-enabled collaboration |
• Docent |
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• Centra |
Working with the vice president of clinical drug evaluation, whose top level sponsorship was critical to the success of the pre-meeting learning program, and the designated company management liaison, INSEAD OnLine created a four-step approach to stimulate innovative thinking through e-learning prior to the meeting.
To indicate top level support for the initiative, participants received first an e-mail from the Vice President of Clinical Drug Evaluation stating the purpose for provoking new consideration of issues related to innovation and the learning objective for the program.
In addition, this e-mail directed the participants to those aspects of the e-learning course that would be most relevant to their work, the URL for the Web site, and their password.
The course Web site included photos and voice messages from each of the four leaders of the course:
Arnoud De Meyer, the INSEAD faculty member, who is the thought leader behind the e-learning course entitled Managing Technological Innovation
The vice president of clinical drug evaluation
Adam Cohen, an external online learning coach
Jens Meyer, INSEAD adjunct faculty
The left navigation bar gave the participants access to the e-learning course, resources and readings, participant profiles, the communication tools, and discussion forum.
This e-learning course, Managing Technological Innovation, is one of the 13 existing e-learning courses available from INSEAD OnLine. Most participants finished this course in separate, individual sessions over a period of 5 to 6 hours.
In the use of this content for the pharmaceutical firm, the fact that some of the modules were not relevant to the drug research industry needed to be made explicit to the participants. This was addressed in the welcome e-mail from the vice president, indicating that there were a few modules that were interesting but not specifically relevant, and identifying and recommending that the participants focus on the modules that would be most meaningful and valuable to them.
Upon conclusion of the e-learning course, participants were asked to consider their own issues and challenges in their experiences with innovation.
The questions posed were:
What are your key innovation challenges?
How could we be doing things differently?
Responses were posted to the discussion forum, and commented upon by other participants. Finally, these postings and related comments were summarized by the faculty into a document that identified five key issues with specific content that supported the deeper dialogue during the planned, monthly video conference meeting.
This innovative approach blending e-learning into a normally scheduled meeting of senior scientists created new opportunities to leverage pre-meeting time through virtual learning and collaboration. Whereas in the past meetings, the pre-meeting is not generally considered learning territory, this opened new avenues to foster learning that meets corporate needs for faster, global, compact, and relevant learning that immediately can be applied to workplace realities.
This model of blending meetings and learning proved valid and is proposed to other
INSEAD corporate clients and HR professionals.
One participant commented, “Today’s training videoconference was valuable. It gave insight into operational processes, new perspectives on strategies and objectives, and useful information regarding innovation in relation to economics.”
The success of this blended model has led the company to consider rolling out this type of e-learning to 27 other business units.
Purpose: To foster innovation and change while accessing insights and experiences through collaboration among the global clinical drug evaluation scientists:
Improve the innovation processes
Engage all in thinking out-of-the-box
Share experiences and insights prior to a regularly scheduled monthly meeting
Program Structure: The blended model, including top level email communication, an e-learning module,Web site and pre-meeting assignments, enabled a geographically dispersed business unit to engage virtually and exchange challenges and experiences.
Number of Learning Hours per Learner: 6 to 8 hours
Total Number of Hours of Learning in the Program: 6 to 8 hours
Number of Learners: 30
Completion Requirements:
Complete e-learning course
Post answers on assignment to the course Web site
Attend video conference meeting
Media and Tools:
Video conferencing
Streaming video
Simulation
Live e-learning using Centra
Web-enabled collaboration
Deployment Mechanism:
Welcome e-mail from vice president
e-Learning course
Collaboration on course Web site
Assignment posting and commentary on course Web site
Without top management support and sponsorship, any e-learning initiative will not succeed. Managers are busy people, when they know that their leadership is backing a program they will engage.
e-Learning typically poses technology challenges to first time users. These need to be dealt with effectively and efficiently to ensure that the technology doesn’t become the issue, but that the content is the focus.
Take-away readings supporting the online learning are very important. Participants want references and readings.
Course Web site collaboration is valuable both prior to the face-to-face event and afterward as a communication tool. For Forum postings, participants use profiles, teamwork, assignments, readings, resources, and e-mail links.
Alumni of corporate programs can be engaged in virtual teamwork simulation projects competing against other teams.
Engaging individuals in e-learning to cover theory and fundamentals prior to face-to-face events can maximize the more expensive classroom time.
Pre-classroom assignments and collaborative exchanges prior to face-to-face events assist the participants and faculty in focusing on the key issues and challenges of the group.
Building content into quality, interactive, online e-learning takes a lot of time and is expensive, thus custom e-learning solutions require innovative blended models leveraging existing e-learning content.
Expense in time and money advocates for investing in e-learning solutions that will be used more than once.
A compelling learning reason, or very specific project, is needed to bring people together virtually, and this needs to be explicitly considered and promoted as integral to an e-learning solution.