The Future Of The MBA Is Happening Right Now At Indiana Kelley

One of the biggest criticisms of online MBA programs is that students don’t get as many opportunities to develop important soft skills, particularly when it comes to working in teams. That’s where Carolyn Goerner comes in. For the last four years Goerner, clinical professor of management and the ALDI, Inc. Distinguished I-Core Clinical Professor at the Kelley School, has directed the KD Insight experience, an advanced-career professionals’ version of Kelley’s innovative Me Inc. program.

The premise of KD Insight, Goerner tells Poets&Quants, is to try to address the things that are traditionally seen as a negative in online programs. And the big one is soft skill development, “that people don’t really get that opportunity to learn to be a good team member.”

As part of program leaders’ explorations into how to overcome this hurdle, they’ve sought ways to “create community,” Goerner says. “And one of the things we’ve realized is that students bond more over an icebreaker or a self-assessment quiz or something like that they have to discuss than they do over a finance problem.”

Don’t get her wrong, she adds — finance problems are great. But in studying the issue and getting years’ worth of feedback from students, Goerner has discovered that “there are better ways they get to know each other.”

“And so we really are pushing the students to try to develop a network within the program, and that’s been our goal for a really long time,” she says. “And this is a more overt way of giving the students more opportunity to forge some connections with one another. So those are really the two things that came through. The students said they needed this, and we wanted to answer that question.”

MORE WANT TO GIVE BACK

Goerner says the last four years have been “an iterative process to put this puppy together,” with her team “really trying to build it from the outside in, meaning that we’ve listened to the students and said, ‘What do you need?’

She has watched as the type of student interested in an online MBA has shifted. Fewer students see the experience as purely transactional; more see it as an opportunity for growth, for self-improvement, and as a way to give more to society.

This semester alone she has three emergency room MDs, a couple of attorneys, and three people who run nonprofits.

“It’s crazy. It’s so much fun,” Goerner says. “And it’s cool because the type of students that we’re now starting to attract are the ones who really appreciate that. Of course there have always been a lot of people saying, ‘Just give me my degree. Give me my technical stuff. Get me out of here.’ But the beauty of it is, I’ve actually seen a shift in our culture in the last four years, because we have students who are saying, ‘No, I’m going to choose Kelley because I want that.’

‘LET’S TRY THIS AND SEE IF IT WORKS’

Goerner says she and the leadership of Kelley Direct are not overly concerned about what’s happening at peer programs. That’s a natural viewpoint for those in the vanguard of online graduate business education.

“What I love about the culture of KD is that we’re very type A, we want it to be right, we want it to be really good,” Goerner continues. “We want it to be research-based, but we are not afraid to experiment. We are not afraid to say, ‘Oh, well, let’s just try that and see what happens. Let’s try this and see if it works.’

“And the students, if it’s something new, we really invite them to co-create and say, ‘Is this working for you? Is this not working for you? What’s the deal?’ And so I’m way more concerned about how my students are responding and what my colleagues are thinking than I am about what some other program is doing.”

TEACHING ONLINE? ‘I ACTUALLY PREFER IT’

Goerner, who teaches negotiation and inclusive leadership, has been at Indiana Kelley for 22 years. She has taught in the Kelley Direct program for the last four, so she has seen firsthand the evolution of the online MBA. More than seen it, she has lived it.

Her experience illustrates the arc of OMBAs in general: Once viewed with suspicion, even doubt, now fully and enthusiastically embraced.

“If you had asked me, even eight or nine years ago, ‘Can you teach negotiation online?’ I think I probably would’ve sputtered with laughter,” she says. “And now, to be candid, I actually prefer it.”

Why? Better teamwork, she says.

“One of the things that happens when you have a face-to-face cohort is, they start to get really competitive and compare their results with one another,” Goerner says. “They are very influenced by what their peers are doing. And so by the end of the class, everyone feels like there is a cookie-cutter negotiation style they’re supposed to have.

“But when I teach it online, I tell them from day one, my job is to help you find your style. And I can do that because they have more time on their own. And more time, just one-on-one with somebody else as opposed to being in this cohort where they’re watching each other like hawks, there are fewer distractions. It really is something that I’ve come to enjoy.”

DON’T MISS THE FUTURE OF THE MBA IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW AT UC-BERKELEY and THE BIG-BRAND B-SCHOOLS TIPTOE INTO THE ONLINE MBA MARKET