"What I have seen – and I've enrolled in a MOOC myself through Harvard – was that the quality of the educational experience was pretty much a talking head, posted PowerPoint slides and one-way learning.

"If you really want to lead in this space it needs to be engaging and it needs to be two-way. You need active discussion groups and to find ways to have live case studies in the same way you would face-to-face. You need that authenticity.

Compete

"Only when you can replicate it in some way are you able to compete with the MOOCs and other offerings from the top business schools around the world."

The technology storm has been on the horizon for some time.

Griffith University last year released a white paper on the future of MBAs, warning that digitisation posed a number of risks.

Chief among these was that "providers without a distinctive value set and perspective will be commoditised" – unable to compete with generic service providers, they would vanish from the market.

The high price point for MBAs would be challenged, the paper predicted, students would demand courses on different timeframes, and many would question whether MBAs offered value at all.


"Employers may value a course on social marketing undertaken via Twitter more than they would one taken with a university," the paper said.

That thinking has spurred Griffith to offer a fully online MBA, which has surprised even proponents of digital teaching by its popularity.

"We saw a growth of 38 per cent on enrolments in 2013 over 2012. Last year we saw growth of enrolment of 58 per cent," says Griffith MBA director Nick Barter.

Online-only

"This year we have taken more students in semester one for the online-only course than in the whole of last year.

"What this is telling us is that the digital-enabled MBA is talking to students in the way they want to be talked to."

Griffith uses video-conferencing technology WebEx to connect students in or outside of classrooms in webinars, relies on the Blackboard platform to collate readings and discussions, has its own MBA app, and is breaking up the online MBA into six-week blocks with two-week breaks.

But it is also turning to free tools like YouTube and Twitter to build the program.


"Technology is all over our MBA," Barter says.

"We used just to record guest presentations and put them on the Griffith MBA YouTube channel but we have changed as students are less inclined to get into a car and go to an event.

"So now before we hold the event I do a recorded interview with the speaker and we ask students to tweet or email the questions they want to ask. Similarly we have a Griffith MBA Twitter stream with our own hashtag, so we are building a repository of students ideas and resources that they can access."

At Deakin University digital integration is also key.

"The university was set up 40 years ago for distance education and it has history and experience in that, so the move to online teaching has been a natural evolution," says Deakin MBA director Colin Higgins.

Appealing

"It has been a slow trajectory because online, until recently, was perceived as lower quality, but it has really come into its own."

Deakin aims for a blended experience, with the option for online appealing to its middle management, mid-career professional target group, who might move locations or lack time to attend class.


"It has led to greater flexibility rather than just online in itself," Higgins says.

"Our students can enrol and participate in any mode and build their studies around their circumstances."

While overseas institutions are making inroads into the local market through MOOCs or offshore courses, Higgins says the appeal of a recognised program persists.

"What we have found is that employers have never really jumped on board the MOOC thing anyway – they still want a credentialed program and they want to know the potential employees have been through an institution they understand," he says.

"We are not seeing a lot of traffic going to MOOCs, but there are other things that will come along and this is part of the experimental phase of that."

Deakin's technology investment includes developing its synchronous learning options – a term used to describe learning that happens in real-time as with webinars, rather than asynchronous, which includes things such as discussion boards, emails or videos.

"We have invested in some new classrooms on the Burwood campus that are like being in a video conference, so there are microphones on each table and as students push a button to talk the camera comes around to them and their face is up on the wall," he says.

Natural


"Everyone who logs in can see the students on the screen. The more users to who log in the more faces appear. It is really the way that our target market is used to working in that space and it doesn't take long before it becomes quite natural and it makes for a richer experience."

Curtin University believes its digital offering will build international enrolments, which have previously represented only about 10 per cent of its market.

Until recently, it has required two capstone units to be done in person in Perth.

"By putting the last two units online we are opening up to international markets," says Dean of the Graduate School of Business Mile Terziovski.

"International students are looking at Perth saying it is pretty expensive to move there and I don't want to go to Australia just for two units.

"This gives us much more flexibility in attracting a more diverse classroom and I think we will build to 25 to 30 per cent international."

Curtin is still playing with the balance of synchronous and asynchronous digital interactions and Terziovski says some of that mix relies on academics embracing the changes as well as students.

"More and more of my professors are moving towards synchronous education, but it depends on individual lecturers and their appetite," he says.


That's an issue also found by AGSM, which engaged a group of high school students to help senior academics get their technological skills up to scratch.

"When you go into a digitalised model it matters about the capability of your staff. Do they know how to teach in this way," Cogin says.

"What we did was hire a bunch of teenagers who trained our staff and professors up because we had some who weren't able to swipe to set up an iPad.

Teenagers

"Working with teenagers and high-schoolers and seeing what they are doing in the future means we will be able to lead the field in this way rather than just responding to what our current students are doing."

Griffith University is also looking to the future.

"The technology we are using now is nice and ok but in five years time will seem quaint and simple," Barter says.

"It is likely that with gaming technology and embracing virtual reality headsets, I can see in maybe 10 years' time all of us putting on a virtual reality headset and sitting in a virtual classroom."

Barter says that the experience at Griffith is prompting the university to look constantly at the digital horizon.

"Like a lot of places we still are in the foothills of this," he says

'"Digital is going to be massive for education. It is already showing itself to be massive for us."