The Role of Online Education in Transforming Lives

Karen Leong (Ms) PGCE MBA MCMI FHEA, Head of HBS Online at University of Hertfordshire

Karen Leong (Ms) PGCE MBA MCMI FHEA, Head of HBS Online at University of Hertfordshire

How would studying online change your life?

Education has been shown to change lives, mine included, and technology has now made it possible for us to access knowledge and information at our leisure. We are both educators and learners at the same time. We can choose to be part of a global classroom through various platforms, and this offers an opportunity to leverage on technology to fill a gap in the workplace and find flexible ways of working with new digital platforms or tools. We need to be open to change and develop a growth mindset that enables us to embrace new challenges.

For us as educators or instructors, technology has not only created a new way of working but also challenged us to think creatively when sharing our knowledge and experience. We are able to explore a variety of online technologies to enable us to adapt to students’ different learning styles, and to do this; we need to take responsibility for our own continuous professional development. This is the key to our professionalism and future. However, it is not just about us; our engagement with a diverse range of students has also opened our eyes to different ways to use technology and learn what works best for them. To us at Hertfordshire Business School, it is all about co-creating and collaborating to enhance the student-staff experience.

Are you ready for the challenge technology brings into your daily life?

With the dynamic changes in technology, we now have the chance to work and/or learn anywhere, anytime. We could be working across the globe with the availability of the internet, which has seen an increase in a diversity of collaborative platforms like Teams, Zoom, Canva, Padlet, and others that will create a form of nomadic working. Similarly, this ability to work flexibly can be applied to online studies, enabling us to choose what, where and how we want to learn.

As the Head of Online with the Business School at the University of Hertfordshire, I am very aware of the need for educators to be open to change and develop their competencies. Over the years, focusing on the use of technology to complement our business degrees has seen us expand globally. The Group is proud to deliver a number of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes that are fully online, with students located internationally from the UK to the Far East. Our other form of blended delivery, with our Supported Distance Learning partner located in Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, Pakistan, Singapore and Indonesia, brings together a diversity of cultures and experiences, creating a global and local (or glocal) learning environment. At Hertfordshire Business School, we offer the opportunity for students to access a global classroom without the need to travel internationally, as it is an affordable and flexible way to access a British qualification. As you can see,

“Online learning doesn’t have to be a solo learning experience.”

-Catherine Cox, Lecturer and Collaborative Partnership Lead, Kenya

Where would the future take us?

The growth and evolution in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the rise of fake news or stories appear to have taken the world by storm based on the rhetoric growing in social media and other platforms. AI is here to stay and has been around for decades without us being aware of it and its effect on our daily lives. How would this affect us, and how would this change the way we live? Are we at risk of disempowering ourselves by relying too much on AI? For this reason, as educators, we need to arm students and ourselves with the ability to be discerning and develop an appetite for learning. In this way, we will be true to ourselves and be ethical in our choices and decisions in all aspects of our lives.

We are now at the cusp of an evolution in how education is delivered globally. As technology and collaborative tools continue to evolve, we will need to grow and adapt the way we live. The world is our oyster as borders blur. With change an inevitable part of life, we need to find ways to develop the soft skills required for the international stage. How do we incorporate emotional and cultural intelligence in an online context is the challenge we look forward to overcoming.