Dean’s Corner

Lessons Learned from a Successful 3-Dimensional Learning Model

Although he probably didn’t know it at the time, Albert Einstein once offered this superb piece of business advice. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” In a way, that’s what we’re doing in the University of Missouri Trulaske College of Business through our 3-Dimensional Learning Model. We scanned the business environment and saw that we needed to rethink our program, but with great uncertainty about the future. So we harnessed that uncertainty and reframed it as an opportunity to do things differently and reinvent what it means to educate a business student. The result is a program that’s in tune with the times today and, hopefully, many tomorrows.

The 3Ds: Relevant Courses. Out-of-Classroom Learning. Applied Experiences
To better prepare our students at Missouri, we knew we needed to do more than simply offer relevant courses. We also needed to leverage our students’ significant out-of-classroom learning, and give them applied experiences that could amplify the knowledge they gain. We knew that for these efforts to have real impact, we wanted every student—all 3,800 of them—to participate in 3D learning and not just make it available for a select few.

Setting this ambitious goal was easy. Establishing content, creating consensus, building partnerships, developing opportunities, analyzing learning outcomes and, of course, acquiring resources—that was the hard part.


Source: University of Missouri

Our Strategy: Do Our Homework.
To make sure we did it right, we asked lots of questions of people in the know. We quizzed business executives and alumni. They advised us to prepare students for jobs that don’t exist yet, in industries still being developed, and using technology not yet imagined. We polled our students. They told us they learn as much outside the classroom and from other students as they do in lecture halls—they told how they wanted to use that time to make themselves marketable for scarce jobs for which they’d be competing—or so they could run their own businesses. We asked corporate recruiters. They told us what skills and competencies students need and what sort of applied experiences set them apart. We used this input and built a program. The formal result became what we now call the Professional Development Program (PDP). It builds on our core curriculum and is mandatory for all undergraduates.

All systems Are Go.
We launched the PDP at Missouri in August 2008. It centered on six essential competencies: Communication. Leadership. Self-management. Business plan design. Business plan execution. The ability to motivate others. We used coursework, out-of-classroom workshops/speakers, and a rigorous faculty-supervised internship requirement to create our three dimensions. After evaluating student outcomes, we discovered they were acquiring more skills than we anticipated. So we worked closely with industry experts and expanded the number of professional competencies to 15.

We worked with consultants at The Hay Group to tap their experience with trend-setting companies. The intent was to customize a competency assessment, which is now given to every business student. This 360-degree assessment now guides each individual’s education and development throughout his or her time with us. We had to hire several more faculty and staff members and raised the student fees to make it all work. But it was an investment that has yielded dividends on every level.

Obstacles, Persistence, Improvisation, Solutions.
To keep building professional competencies, we challenged ourselves to conduct approximately 250 workshops, seminars, and presentations each year. Even more challenging was generating internships in a college town with a relatively small business community. In the midst of the economic downturn, we still have to find nearly 750 internships for every cohort. No small order.

As the job market weakened, we relented on the requirement that every internship be paid. We found a way to make internships during the school year work, increased our international internship offerings, and partnered with non-profit organizations, where interns were tasked with solving business problems. We never relented on our requirement of rigor, however. If the students aren’t building their competencies, our model fails.

What We Learned, Why It’s Instructive.
Our results show there’s a huge competitive advantage gained by using the 3D Learning Model. Students complete the program with core skills, robust competencies, and applied experiences that apply to today’s jobs and tomorrow’s. It’s a successful formula we could have enjoyed for a long time, but rather than rest on our laurels, we’re expanding the concept by targeting beyond the PDP into specific disciplinary areas—and focusing strategically given tight resources. We’re emphasizing areas of unmet demand, where there is growth despite challenging economic times. We’re keen on efficiency and rely on areas where we can leverage and co-opt the resources of our comprehensive campus.

Focusing assets where they’ll be most productive.
Given these constraints, we’re focusing our attention on the following new 3D learning opportunities:

• The Entrepreneurship Alliance, a program that supplements a new campus-wide entrepreneurship minor. The Alliance leverages classwork with an assortment of interactions with entrepreneurial business executives, tours of start-up company operations at various phases, competitive activities, field trips, start-up seed capital for student enterprises and mentoring.
• The Sales Program, a program that is also open campus-wide, has a set of courses partnered with activities outside the classroom, competitions, targeted internships and mentorship.
• The execMBA, an innovative, hybrid program designed for professionals who need the flexibility of online learning but also want to network face-to-face on campus with faculty, mentors and peers while feeling a physical connection with their campus.