Designing ambitious global programs: University of Melbourne
The establishment of the FOME Alliance and the consolidation of the University of Melbourne’s digital strategy converged at an opportune moment. By late 2018, Melbourne had already experimented with online learning across the university, creating and trialling newly developed online programs as well as transitioning existing courses to the online space as an alternative or replacement to face-to-face teaching.
Delving into online learning required a paradigm shift for the university. As a research-led, campus-based institution, Melbourne wished to provide flexible and innovative delivery models whilst refusing to compromise on its value proposition: a high-quality student experience. This required a careful repositioning of the university as a digital and on-campus provider for both students and faculty. In order to justify this transition, there was a recognition that the university would need to provide academics with the capacity and capability to embed effective online delivery models.
The establishment of the Melbourne School of Professional and Continuing Education (MSPACE) in 2015 formalised the process of online learning across the university. Along with a remit to deliver lifelong learning and executive education, the School also served as the online learning arm for the entire university, whilst housed within the Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE). The complementarity of lifelong learning with flexible, non-traditional models of education meant that MSPACE’s most natural home resided within the Faculty. Taking on the role of the University’s online centre, the Faculty recognised that business education, particularly post-experience education, required a unique approach to high-quality online provision for students.
At the same time, Imperial College’s School of Business was spearheading an ambitious global initiative of leading business schools seeking to provide new and innovative forms of digital education. The creation of the insendi learning platform provided the tool to solidify the members’ online ambitions. The FOME Alliance presented the University of Melbourne with an opportunity to engage directly with like-minded business schools and to raise its profile as a pioneer in online learning whilst using insendi to support high-quality online programs that refused to compromise on their value proposition of the student experience.
Professor Nasser Spear views the Faculty’s entry into FOME as particularly timely: “The strategy of MSPACE and the strategy of FOME were closely aligned. We wanted to work with leading business schools, particularly in the post-experience space as we were developing our own online programs in that space - the Master in Professional Management and the Master in Supply Chain Management. This produced a lot of synergy between FOME partners.”
FBE also recognised that participating in a global community of leading business schools would support its ambitions to use digital education as a means of further internationalising its curriculum and extending its shared practice beyond national confines. Whilst the University of Melbourne experienced immediate gains from becoming a FOME member, the arrival of the pandemic in early 2020 amplified the role of the alliance in underpinning global shared experience:
“The geographic diversity of alliance members is of great value [to the university]. Whatever initiative we are working on - whether it is virtual exchange, course sharing, joint qualifications, or even platform development where we incorporate feedback from students across institutions - this is all invaluable, particularly during Covid.”
Professor Spear is currently leading a FOME initiative to offer collaborative qualifications across member institutions. This work is just one element of leveraging the diversity and strengths of member schools in an effort to continuously improve the student experience. Professor Spear notes:
“The role of the FOME Alliance is to learn from each other and we want to give students a great experience, not just within our own institutions but across all FOME members. From a consumer standpoint, students want to see that we are offering them quality education, a great experience, and excellent assessment, along with flexibility. We need to address these things and we will never reach an end line.”
As FOME enters its next phase, the University of Melbourne is poised to work in tandem with members to shape the future of high-quality management education. The alliance has created a foundation of shared capabilities and capacities that have underpinned the university’s own digital strategy and facilitated exciting new innovations and collaborations within the online space. As higher education institutions emerge from the pandemic, the alliance members are uniquely positioned to set the bar for high-quality online business education that serves its students and charts new ground.
