Bringing part-time MBA students into the AGSM community through an online onboarding program
Dr Maurizo Floris- AGSM, Business School
In recent years the AGSM has seen rapid growth of online students in our part-time MBA programs. Increasingly students missed out on our one-day face-to-face Orientation Conference. COVID-19 provided the immediate incentive to create a comprehensive online onboarding program for the 254 commencing students in T2( 60 % increase over T2 in 2019).
One of our main aims is to bring these new students into our AGSM learning community. However, how can we begin developing an online learning community during onboarding for these geographically distributed and time-scarce students?
We created an integrated Onboard Advantage Program that kicks-off with a two-hour orientation conference before term commencement, followed by a series of scheduled workshops and personal touch points throughout a student’ s first term at the AGSM.
While the online Orientation Conference allows communication of some essential adminstrative information, the focus of this 2-hour session is to create excitement and emotional connection. This is achieved by humanising student-facing AGSM team members and, above all, two small group break-out sessions that allow students to meet fellow students.
Following the Orientation Conference students can participate in“ Three Coffees”, where we connect groups of 4 students to self-organise either online or face-to-face coffee catch ups between weeks 2- 5. This complements individual calls students receive to check they are all set up the term( in week 1), and a second call to plan the next term( in week 5). There are also workshops on Time-saving Study Skills, Blitzing Assessments, and on career development.
Feedback on the initial Orientation Conference was extremely positive and suggests that this was as strongly regarded as the face-to-face orientation. Importantly, nearly 80 % of new students was able to participate, more than was previously possible.
While the program has been very successful to date, it is seen as a Minimum Viable Product that we can improve over time. Trial and error of individual elements of the program will allow us to continuously improve these. Where we have an opportunity for step-change in regards to community building for new students in their initial term, is to integrate a number of deliberate communitybuilding activities in the starter course( MBAX9131 Leadership) that each student is expected to take. Such an integrated perspective of their‘ First 90 Days’ with the AGSM will set up students for success even better, and further strengthen an increasingly online learning community and professional network.
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