At the first meetings professors of the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg University (GSOM SPbU) actually exchanged their experience over a cup of tea with cookies and candies as Knowledge Café was supposed to enable informal and live communication. Then the pandemic began. The possibility to discuss the arising problems with colleagues played a big part in adaptation to online training. Today the project is becoming a part of The Teaching Excellence Lab (TEL) in Business Education. It is planned to enhance the hybrid format teaching methods and search for solutions of such timeless problems as student involvement and learning efficiency assessment. The details are in the interview with the mastermind and irreplaceable organizer of Knowledge Café, acting Head of the Department of Strategic and International Management, Tatiana Klemina.

Please tell us how the Knowledge Café project made it through the pandemic.

During the pandemic we switched over to online, so our meetings became more attended: professors working at different campuses — Mikhailovskaya Dacha and Volkhovsky Pereulok — and having different schedules, were able to join us. The format remains the same: there's always a headliner who shares his opinion on the issue under discussion and experience of its solution. The presentation is followed by the discussion, which often goes beyond the topic, so we can look at the teaching issues from a broader perspective.

Which format is more convenient — in person with a cup of tea or online?

On the one hand, when we meet face-to-face, energy makes us more productive and involved. On the other hand, experience has shown that online gives us extraordinary possibilities to engage more audiences. We decided to keep Knowledge Café online until the end of the academic year, and later we'll see. Hybrid format seems to me the most convenient, because those who cannot attend offline because of their schedule can join online.

What teaching problems were solved thanks to this kind of meetings during the pandemic and switching over to online?

I wouldn't separate Knowledge Café from the work of the whole team and especially the efforts of our technical support. Together we managed to make the adaptation to online learning quicker and smoother for both professors and students. During the pandemic 60-70 people attended the meetings. How to organize lectures? What are the ways to get the students involved in active work during classes? How do we conduct polls? How should we look at preparation for exams and tests and reduce the possibility of academic misconduct? How to work with slides? Watching the slides on a big screen is completely different from watching them on a smartphone... In general, there's no aspect of teaching that didn't need to be revised and adapted. 

Today, when life is returning to normal and students are coming back to classrooms, how can you benefit from this experience?

The most important thing is that the experience of online learning highlighted and aggravated many problems that we already knew existed. This refers mainly to active involvement of students in the learning process, especially when working with a big audience of 200 people, not 15–20. At seminars it has always been easier to get the students engaged: the audience is smaller and the format implies that the students speak as much as the professor. At lectures, especially for large audiences, it is a challenge. If the students don't reflect and discuss but only listen, they gain knowledge less effectively. How do we get a large audience of students involved in interaction with the professor? This challenge exists in offline learning too, but it is especially acute in online.

 

What are the tools to actively promote student engagement?

When switching to online, we adapted the techniques that professors had been using before. Rooms is a very useful new Teams feature.

Many of the colleagues often use teamwork at their classes, when students split into groups of 5–6 and complete a task: solve a case or discuss a problem and then present the results to others. This is one of the effective ways to involve students in active work in class. How did professors manage before online meeting rooms appeared? Before the class they had to group the students according to the list, create separate Teams channels and add the students. Sometimes there were mismatches because you couldn't foresee if a person was going to attend the class or not. It took a lot of time. Meeting rooms solved these problems. According to the students' feedback they also consider this tool effective. As a professor I also like group chats where together with a whole group of students we can discuss tasks or a certain stage of coursework.

 What are the aims of Knowledge Café today?

I would highlight two principal topics for discussion at Knowledge Café and future work: learning efficiency and hybrid format. This year we had a very interesting meeting with Professor Elena Zavialova as headliner where a serious and system-level methodological issue was raised — how to assess learning efficiency in general and in relation to separate subjects. Learning is like a black box, because nobody has definitively explained how knowledge and competence are gained. There are several stakeholders in this process, each of them having their own idea about effectiveness. Students are the main stakeholder but professors' opinions are no less important. Our graduates' future employers also have their idea about what high-quality education means. Business school's administration has certain expectations as well. So before speaking about tools and technologies that would raise learning efficiency, we have to think of the desired result. I would like to continue discussing this topic. There's already an idea and a potential headliner for another interesting topic — how to organize active students' work on revision of each other's works. Another important and large topic is hybrid learning. In this case hybrid learning means a format where some students come to the classroom and some attend a class online.

At GSOM SPbU some classes are already in hybrid format. What are its particular features?

Yes, we've already used this format in the autumn and a number of challenges became evident right away. When working at hybrid classes professors basically communicate with two different audiences. It's one thing when students are next to you, you see their eyes and they feel your energy. It's another thing when you communicate through the screen. It is more difficult to create these "vibes". How to teach? How to organize teamwork? How to organize tests? It is a very serious complex of methodological challenges. Since hybrid learning will stay with us for a long time or even forever, the topic is of great current interest. The task of a professor working in hybrid format is to get both - those in the classroom and those online — actively engaged in work.

What are the benefits of hybrid learning?

Why is it worth it? Firstly, even if the pandemic comes to an end, hybrid format enables normal learning process in any other force majeure conditions.

Secondly, thanks to hybrid format students who fail to attend the classroom for personal reasons can join the class online and also we can easily invite guest speakers. Many professors invite businessmen to classes who explain management instruments using the example of their companies.

 

Are there any other tools that make hybrid learning efficient?

Chats — when students can ask a question or leave a comment during the class. Polls are convenient to find out the students' opinion about a certain process. You can place quizzes — short tests in the beginning of the class to find out what the students remember from the previous class to smoothly move to the next topic.

To what extent may hybrid learning be applied at GSOM SPbU?

The extent of hybrid learning depends both on aims and capabilities. Hybrid classrooms should be equipped in a specific way, there are many technical aspects. Some part of the classes will definitely switch to hybrid format. Given that hybrid learning is developing so rapidly, it would be great if Teams meeting rooms continued to update. Now there are some restrictions that make it impossible for the students to share screen within the team etc. Synchronization of Teams with electronic schedule would be very useful, too.

What do professors think of hybrid learning?

Online and hybrid learning proved to be much more labor-consuming for professors and that's not because you have to master Microsoft Teams. You think more of how to present information, work more carefully with slides, organization of teamwork and feedback. In the classroom you can come to a group of students, ask a question and direct the discussion in the right way. Screen doesn't allow that. If you ask 200 students that are listening to you to turn on the cameras, you won't see all of them anyway. From our experience, my colleagues and I found that online classes demand much more energy rather than traditional ones. But this is at the same time its advantage. Dramatic transfer to online learning left us unsatisfied and made us go forward — reflect and search the ways to enhance interaction with students and improve the process of teaching.