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Loïc PLÉ is Director of IÉSEG’s Center for Educational & Technological Innovation, and Deputy Director for Pedagogy and Academic Development. We spoke to him about the role of this Center at the School, the new use of online learning and new technologies, and the implementation of a new Pedagogical Certificate at the School.

When and why was the Center for Educational and Technological Innovation created at IÉSEG?

The CETI was officially created in September 2012 and was designed to build on the activities of the previous service called the “Pôle NET” (for New Educational Technologies). The very first mission of this pole was to create, implement and develop the IÉSEG Learning Management System (LMS), which is called ieseg-online. This is a website based on an open-source software called Moodle, which is used by 124 million registered users all over the world. This platform, now run by the CETI, enables professors to share documents and information with their students, share audio and video contents, give out and retrieve their assignments, prepare online quizzes, and interact with their students, etc. The second mission of the original “Pôle NET”, was also to create digital content for professors, allowing students to work in advance on the theory and then make practical applications in class.

How has the CETI developed since 2012 and what are its key missions and activities?

Today, the CETI has 5 staff members: 3 pedagogical engineers, 1 person dedicated to the creation of audiovisual content and myself as the team manager and Deputy Director for Pedagogy and Academic Development. In addition to managing our LMS, it has several key missions:

• Contributing to enriching and improving student learning at IÉSEG through the progressive integration of new tools and practices in the classroom and online.

• Providing innovative solutions and learning resources developed with and for all teachers, which can also lead to specific pedagogical experiments run by the CETI.

• Monitoring and following up of pedagogical developments at the School. These can include the promotion and dissemination of new practices and tools; training and coaching of teachers and administrative staff involved in teaching & learning; and carrying out studies and research on these pedagogical developments.

• Monitoring overall trends in teaching & learning and sharing this knowledge and expertise with teaching staff and externally (at conferences, through the media, etc.).

The CETI members therefore aim to draw on their expertise to help the school and its teachers enhance their technical and pedagogical expertise. This implies that the learning solutions (content, training devices, etc.) created by CETI in collaboration with the teachers aim to be extremely specialized and differentiated from what already exists in the higher education sector, in terms of form and/or content.

The team therefore plays a key role in the definition, deployment and future evolutions of IÉSEG’s Teaching and Learning Strategy, which aims to create a unique, outstanding student learning experience, and which is centered on intercultural learning and student engagement (the four pillars of this strategy are outlined in this article).

IÉSEG has recently introduced a Pedagogical Certificate for its professors. What is this and why has it been introduced?

Yes, the IÉSEG Teaching Certificate has been launched last year, and this ‘program’ is coordinated by Professor Catherine Gabelica, who has a Ph.D. in Educational Sciences.

I would describe this certificate quite simply as the award that professors receive after following a one-year full program of activities aimed at improving teaching quality. It is open to anyone on the academic staff – new or more senior staff – who feels the need to reinforce or improve their practical teaching skills.

It has been designed to cover the basis of effective teaching but also to propose some more specialized training courses. The three core building blocks cover main areas of teaching quality, namely preparing/designing a course, providing education (and specifically communicating effectively and organizing learning) and assessing education. Next to these basic blocks, we also have more specific training modules that are meant to specialize in a more specific topic such as how to teach in large classes, how to design cases or even how to instill creativity as a generic competence.

Five professors have just finished the certificate and each year we will propose 12 places to professors who want to follow the certificate. They also receive individualized coaching in addition to the training modules. The goal is to help them reflect on their teaching practices and engage in change to improve the learning experience of their students. Also, we will visit them in their classes to engage in a constructive dialogue about how these changes can be implemented in class.

How are IÉSEG and the CETI using new technologies and online learning to enhance the student learning experience?

Online learning and technology clearly has a huge role to play in teaching and learning at IÉSEG but we do not want to use digital technology just for the sake of it. The first question that always comes to our mind when creating online content is: “how would this best benefit our students?” We therefore work closely with professors to help them integrate relevant online content and digital formats into the courses.

Following several professors’ feedback, for example, we have developed several online quantitative methods resources for our students. These are used to ensure that students master the prerequisite knowledge in courses relying on quantitative methods

The CETI also created a MOOC in infrastructure finance, which is a free gamified online course. Students enter the course as a trainee in a company and have to go through different steps, at their own pace, to reach the position of the firm’s CEO. They do so by answering quizzes, watching videos, participating in online activities, etc.

As part of the development of its e-learning course offer, the CETI has also helped to develop a fully online gamified course for students, again in the area of finance. This ten-week Master’s elective course “CDO and Securitization techniques” (entirely in English) begins with two weeks of theory, in the form of videos. Students must respond to quizzes in order to check they have grasped the necessary theoretical foundations.

In a second step, they are invited to form pairs and create their own company together by choosing a logo, a name, and their functions. This step brings realism and depth to the project they are about to lead. Students then upload a portfolio and select their stocks using an Excel interface. Then, the pairs are led to present their portfolio to their investor (role played by the teacher) during an online session. In the following weeks, they are confronted with several “shocks”. A shock is a fictitious event that occurs randomly over a six-week period. It can take various forms, (a newspaper article, a news notification received on smartphone, a message left on an answering machine) and are accessible on the course website. The teams are warned about the shock, to which they must react within 48 hours maximum by offering investors a readjustment of their portfolio to deal with the event. At the end of the ten-week simulation period, they are asked to break down their portfolios and present their final reports to their investors.

The idea of such pedagogical innovation is to help students learn the theoretical knowledge and the practical skills they will then use in their professional lives.