EMBA: Rise in online enrolments

SP Jain School sees 50% growth in enrolments for its executive MBA offering

Even as worldwide EMBA enrolments fell owing to the Covid-19 crisis, SP Jain School of Global Management reported 50% growth in student numbers for its Executive MBA programme — delivered using a proprietary Engaged Learning Online (ELO) technology and the institute attributes the significant spike in student numbers to the success of this technology.

For its June 2020 online cohort, the Executive MBA witnessed a growth in numbers from multiple Indian cities, as well as from different international destinations such as Australia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and the US, giving students access to a global, multicultural network. Students have, on an average, 13-plus years of work experience and represent a range of industries such as automobile, banking and finance, engineering, hospitality, IT and government sectors. In response to the evolving needs of the modern organisation, the Executive MBA curriculum has been updated to incorporate a number of technology courses into the business curriculum. The advanced course structure is a blend of core course subjects, electives, simulations and projects, and students can specialise in areas such as marketing, finance, operations, entrepreneurship and general management.

The Executive MBA is an 18-month part-time programme delivered using ELO, a sophisticated online learning system that replicates a live classroom down to its last detail, thanks to a number of high-end features, says Nitish Jain, president, SP Jain School of Global Management.

The ELO studio is set up with a robotic tracking camera for the faculty, which allows them to move freely, maintain eye contact with students, respond to their visual cues, moderate discussions and more, all in realtime. Faculty and students are able to engage in one-on-one conversations as if they were sitting side-by-side.

ELO enables the faculty to evaluate each student’s level of engagement, respond to them individually and keep them motivated — just like they would do in a conventional classroom. A big advantage is that ELO engages even those students who wouldn’t have normally participated in an on-campus classroom discussion.

“The increase in online enrolments is noteworthy,” said Jain. “Unlike Zoom, Google Meet or other popular videoconferencing software that were mostly designed for office use, the emphasis within ELO is upon ‘student engagement’. Over 350 Executive MBA students have experienced this technology since June 2020, and the experience has been fantastic. We are collecting feedback and tweaking our technology to ensure that it is at the forefront of online education.”

In addition to the online version, SP Jain delivers an onsite Executive MBA in Mumbai, Singapore and Dubai. These too have performed very well.