Business Education Initiatives Planned at UC Funding source: Cleveland Foundation's L. Dale Dorney Fund Date: July 24, 2000 Expansion and enhancement of global business education: CBA's marketing faculty is already employing distance learning technology to engage in international project courses. That is helping to expand the possibilities for global learning among CBA's students, many of whom have time demands in their lives that make international travel difficult. The goal for this initiative is to achieve a five-fold increase in the number of CBA faculty using both video- and web-based technology to collaborate with international teaching partners. The increase is expected to encompass faculty from all of CBA's programs. Development of web-enhanced MBA finance courses: Recent growth in the MBA program requires CBA's finance department to staff 10-12 core finance courses annually. Using new learning technology including streaming video of lectures, web exercises and CD-based finance material the department hopes to reduce the staffing demands of those courses by half. The resulting gain for the faculty would pay dividends in increased elective course offerings. CBA hopes to be able to experiment with similar delivery of core course material in other departments across the business curriculum. Exploration and enhancement of "communities of practice" as a model for lifelong learning: Communities of practice (CP) is a growing concept in the business world that allows for an ongoing pursuit within a group bound by shared experience and inspired by a passion for a specific issue or enterprise. The group members are peers in the execution of "real work." What holds them together is a common sense of purpose and a real need to know what each other knows. CP is an excellent fit to the activities within a business school and creates a framework for expanding teaching beyond traditional boundaries and into the real world in new ways. "This concept is already working in Corporate America. There's no reason not to use it in Education America," says Ann Welsh, associate professor of management and the leader for this initiative. CP holds the promise of making business colleges centers of expertise that assist students not just by preparing them for business careers, but by assisting them with professional issues as their careers develop. This initiative will take its first steps towards that goal by identifying companies that are currently successfully engaged in CP and by surveying CBA alumni to hear their opinions on how this concept may be workable for them. Best practices in 21st century business education: Technology promises to continue to advance the tools for delivering education. This initiative will support both future developments in academic technology for the University of Cincinnati's College of Business Administration, as well as efforts to discover how to best utilize academic technology such as multi-site learning that is already in place. Main story about the Cleveland Foundation grant.