To Gain Business Skills, Embrace a Learning Mindset
Staying home offers an opportunity for online education, say business professors
Feeling isolated at home? When it comes to learning, you’ve got some of the world’s best education at your fingertips.
Despite the many challenges and threats from the coronavirus, business professors at Texas McCombs point to opportunities for remote learning. “For the learner, there’s really no shortage of opportunity to hunker down and invest in yourself,” says Insiya Hussain, assistant professor of management.
A Learning Mindset
Remote learners can set themselves up for success, beginning with their outlook. Rather than focus on what can’t be done at the moment, students of all types can view the current situation as an opportunity for challenge and growth.
Management Professor John Daly says he sees teaching remote classes as an opportunity to gain new skills. “Rather than depressingly whining about missing the classroom, I decided I wanted to learn as much as I could about teaching virtually,” he says. That sparked a drive to see what tools and approaches worked best for his peers, leading to a new way to view the online courses he watches. “I now wonder how they did a specific production move, what software they were using, what their model of teaching was, and so on,” he says. “Curiosity is amazing. And the more I dug in, the less I thought about what we did in the past.”
Happiness expert and Marketing Professor Raj Raghunathan also emphasizes the necessity of adopting a growth mindset in order to learn.
“I think perhaps the most important－and least understood or talked about skills are what I call meta skills. These are skills required to gain skills,” says Raghunathan.
Raghunathan contrasts what are known as growth versus fixed mindsets. People with a fixed mindset believe we are born with set skills that can’t be changed much, whether that’s a talent for math, art, or dance, for example. “But it turns out that’s not really true. Almost anybody can learn almost anything,” he says. In fact, your mindset can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“If you think you can learn, then you’re probably going to put energy and effort into it, and you’re going to end up discovering it’s true.” — Raj Raghunathan
“Have the confidence and faith that things are going to improve in ways that you can’t predict right now,” Raghunathan says. “This crisis is going to be the reason that a lot of millionaires, maybe billionaires, emerge two years from now. They will somehow recognize every new opportunity and capitalize on it. Why not you? That’s the idea.”
Subject, Student Matters
Not all students and subject matters are equally suited to online learning. But for those that are, the benefits can be substantial.
“Some people are better visual learners, auditory learners, or verbal learners. There are about eight different types,” says Hussain. While social and interpersonal learning will continue to improve as online tools get better, she notes that solitary learners do especially well with online education.
The nature of the subject matters, too. Skills that are deeply technical — finance, accounting, and software, for example, can be studied well online, Hussain says. “There are a lot of things that require careful detail, coding, formulas, numbers, statistics, and so on. Those require you to move backwards and forwards, pause and double check things” she says. “All of that is so much easier through online learning, when you can rewind videos and do things at your own pace.” If the instructor moves too quickly and something is missed, students no longer have to turn to a friend to borrow their notes.
Remote Negotiations
Some professors are finding success teaching subjects that, upon first glance, might not work as well online. Andrew Brodsky, assistant professor of management, taught his Art and Science of Negotiation class online during the spring semester due to the coronavirus. When he read course evaluations after the semester ended, he found students were satisfied with the arrangement. (And the fall semester of his class ran up a long waitlist, even after being announced as online-only.)
“A lot of students commented that it was different to negotiate virtually, but it wasn’t necessarily worse.” — Andrew Brodsky
That’s in line with research findings, which show the same thing about virtual interactions more broadly: They’re not better or worse than in person, just different.
Is practicing virtual negotiations useful for students? “With the changing landscape of business, they may be increasingly moving to Zoom as companies realize they can save money on travel or by having people work remotely,” Brodsky says. That means more workers will need the know-how to be effective from afar.
Virtual Reality
Researchers say the coronavirus may have simply accelerated a move to distance learning and working that was already underway.
“If there’s any silver lining as far as work is concerned, it’s forced a lot of people to ‘skill up’ quickly in learning new technologies, and to do so — mostly — without complaint, as there’s really no other choice.” — Insiya Hussain.
That should translate into a long-term gain in new workplace skills.
In fact, students no longer have to see their situation as a choice between going online or learning in person, working or being in school.
“Finally, if there’s something to be grateful for, it’s that unlike any other time in the past, we have truly amazing technology that allows us to stay connected even during a global pandemic,” Hussain says. “Knowledge workers are lucky to have the tools to be able to manage.”
Story by Jeremy M.Simon
