Distance Learning/Teaching - Hybrid Model

For many decades the University of Wisconsin-Madison used distance learning methods as part of their out-reach to rural parts of the state and to reach busy professionals. Experience for several years as a Business School professor with a Medical School Administrative Medicine MBA style degree defined the value of a hybrid program.

Hybrid is defined as using a combination of distance technology learning and face-to-face teaching. The model used contact via available relevant technology (from slow scan video in the 1970s, digital voice and video conference calls in the 1980s, web-based text and video in the 90s and 3-D in the past decade). It also used stone and glass classroom bookends of class start-up and closing. Graduation was an option of in person or by distance.

While some classes may be taught purely at a distance; the very high cost and challenges of many professional degree classes would seem to demand a mix of more face-to-face networking through direct human interaction. I would suggest a mix of 80 percent distance with 20 percent interpersonal in a classroom.

While many universities and corporations use various forms of distance learning for certificates, degrees http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/imc/imconline.aspx and even simple meetings (see www.Gronstedtgroup.com), the discussion is still open on the success of pure and hybrid models.  Even if a program used only distance learning technology; as a student or participant I would be very tempted to plan a face-to-face meeting during the program and before graduation.
 Clarke L. Caywood, Ph.D. Professor, Northwestern University

Waiting for UAL, and customs and immigration, and the bus driver and the hotel clerk named Godot

Waiting for UAL 836, and customs and immigration, the bus driver, and the hotel clerk named Godot...

One industry that provides my students with some of the richest personal examples and experiences in crisis communications and leadership are the airlines.
I found that the airlines, despite years of tragic experience and other just time wasting experiences still don’t “have it right”. If the pilot of UA 836 from Shanghai said just one more time (after about 8 statements) “just bear with us”, I thought of an agency that should script what pilots and flight personnel say. Too much personality and quips are not welcome when you have been in the airport for 9 hours, 3.5 hours trapped in the plane 15 feet out on the tarmac, served only pretzels and water.
The serious aspect of the travel was that the two flight attendants heard a noise in the rear of the plane shortly after backing away from the gate that we later described as the sound of crushing the luggage vehicle. It was missed by the pilot, but thankfully the flight attendants (who are there for our safety) stopped him from moving to take-off. The saga continued with an inability to diagnose the huge noise (not luggage loose in the hold), but some sort of firing mechanism in the engine (a huge retort). Read or ask Rob Mark at his airline blog site http://www.jetwhine.com/about/ for a technical explanation. My expertise, if I dare, is the failure of the service and communications management and leadership of UAL. 1. They did apologize (over and over and over again). 2. They did not offer a consistent pattern of explanation or up-dates (forgetting us for an hour at a time). 3. They “forgot” to tell us that the flight attendants could not continue past a three hour time (labor agreement) until that became a crisis. 4. They did not arrange for labor to open the doors again, 5. They did not send us to the right immigration gate (imagine about 200 people walking back and forth at 9 p.m. looking for a way out). 6. They did not warn the airport security that 200 plus would have to be re-entered since we had walked from point A to B inside security and needed to be checked again, they forgot to tell the baggage handlers that they needed to remove hundreds of bags or the carrousel would not allow more bags from the belt (I unloaded about 30 bags for exercise), they forgot to put bags on the right bus (some of us peons went to the economy class hotel and others, well you elites know who you are). They failed to tell the hotel to have more than one desk clerk of the 5 on duty help check us in the hotel, etc. And, newsflash, they failed to test the engine before coming up to the gate in front of hundreds of passengers waiting Now, they are now backing away. I guess we will have to “just bear with them”.
The answer in crisis leadership (some insight due to Ian Mitroff) is to consider the crisis in the context of a whole general system: the passengers are connected to the plane is connected to the loading gate, is connected to immigration, is connected to security is connected to baggage claim, is connected to the bus, to the hotel, to the bus, to immigration, etcetera, etcetera as Yul Brenner so capably said. In the spirit of full disclose I did get a free ticket (I think it is a ticket because the letter from the customer relations professional is such a generic apology it might be from Tiger Woods for a free sleeve of golf balls or a well used club for smashing car windows.
The next day from the time of the loading scheduled for 2 p.m. it was also a series of missteps: the same plane had the same mechanical failure (before we loaded). UAL tried to have us bump the same flight number’s plane (all several hundred of us jostling for position at the one gate). However, they finally abandoned the original plane on the tarmac, December 9 flyers (me) took December 10 flyers’ plane and they took (we heard) another plane. To my flying partners at UAL: Systems, systems, systems are linked with software and communications and leadership!

China Times Blogs and Tweets on Crisis Leadership

China Times Blogs and Tweets on Crisis Leadership

I would have posted this blog and a number of Tweets from Xiamen and Shanghai, but I was blocked from teaching Chinese business leaders some modern lessons of history in crisis management and leadership.
My weekend of teaching and two days of conversations with my colleagues in China were limited by my addiction to using the web for teaching and examples. My access to Youtube for teaching my class of Executive MBAs was also prevented. I tried to locate equivalent videos of the CEO of Mattel apologizing to the Chinese government and to the people of China, but the videos so readily available via Youtube were not available on more than one China site. It was a shame because I really wanted to help the 33 business leaders (age 35-55) who own their own firms or are CEOs of others that crisis management can be taught and practiced by observing the mistakes of others. Naturally, there was a lot of “news” about Tiger Woods that gave me an opportunity to provide instruction on a failed crisis leadership display 1. He did not respond in a timely fashion, 2. He did not apologize, 3. He did not respond personally (except through an “announcement” on his website. 4. He was not forthcoming about the real issues in even a slightly transparent manner, 5. Even after an initial delay of 2 days and later of 5 days; we do not know what he really wants us to know. And, obviously a man with over 7 million Google “hits” cannot ask for privacy or to be left alone. Tiger, like the Hong Kong movie star Edison Chen, “hunter” VP Dick Cheney, David Letterman, Jack Welch, Governor Blagovich of Illinois, or the officers of any publicly traded company cannot expect privacy. They are now all “public figures” in the broadest sense. The business leaders in China that I know (over 1,000 whom I have educated and trained) now know that they are public figures (hard for many corporate officers all over the world to accept). They are especially “public” if they make, distribute, sell or retail high risk and high visibility products or services: toys, food, pharmaceuticals, cars, cosmetics, products with long directions of operation, education, legal services, health care and others. They are also at risk if they make or market products for the elderly, children, women, the poor, disabled, uneducated, and more.

I wish the Chinese government would allow educators and others to access the lessons of history so that their citizens will not repeat the mistakes of the West.

"Fat American comes to Lijiang" My favorite headline

I wasn't happy with the title that showed up in China. This was not the title for the original article in the Chicago Tribune. Still it reminds me to stay fit.


Fat American comes to Lijiang
Lijiang, China
Flag of China
Monday, Jun 09, 2008 23:07

Entry 147 of 348 | show all | print this entry
Enjoying this travel blog? Donate to happysheep's travel fund today!

Good to see the Olympic sponsors getting some leverage with their marketing.



www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-olympictorchjun10,0,3796738.story
chicagotribune.com
Northwestern professor to carry university name during run with Olympic torch in China

By Jodi S. Cohen

Tribune reporter

7:22 PM CDT, June 9, 2008

As a Northwestern University communications professor, Clarke Caywood knows something about effective marketing.

So when he carries the Olympic torch Tuesday in China, he isn't going to miss an opportunity to promote the Northwestern brand. Though Olympic officials rejected his idea to hold a Medill School of Journalism banner, Caywood still plans to carry something with the Northwestern name.

He also plans to use the experience as a marketing opportunity when he returns to the United States, perhaps by starting his classes and corporate lectures with pictures of him running with the torch.

"What professor wouldn't like Olympic background music when they open their lectures?" said Caywood, who teaches in the integrated marketing communications program.

"When I give talks to industry and professional organizations, I will certainly put some of this in there as a metaphor for high achievement," he said from Lijiang, China.

Caywood, who has been a visiting professor at several Chinese universities, was invited to be a torchbearer by Samsung Corp., one of the relay sponsors. There will be more than 2,300 torchbearers during the flame's remaining 41/2-month journey to the August Olympics in Beijing, according to Samsung.

The relay has not been the "Journey of Harmony" that Chinese officials envisioned. In San Francisco, London, Paris and elsewhere, the relay was marked by pro-Tibet demonstrations and protests over China's human rights record. The relay also was suspended to mourn China's earthquake victims.

Caywood views the protests as a shrewd communications technique.

"The people involved with the Tibetan issue have a right to find an ongoing event and try to use it as a way to get their story told," he said. "In marketing, we sometimes recommend that, a co-branding."

Northwestern professor Tom Collinger, chairman of integrated marketing communications, said the school has been developing relationships with Chinese universities and businesses. Twenty students are working at companies there this summer, he said, and about 50 percent of the program's students are international, many from Asian countries.

While in China last week, Caywood lectured for the fifth time at Sun Yat-sen University, speaking to the business school's graduate students about crisis and risk management. He also participated in a seminar on building environmental awareness.

Collinger said Caywood has been instrumental in developing Medill's programs in public and media relations, and crisis communications.

"He has really been very much the leader of that area of our curricula," Collinger said.

On Tuesday, Caywood said he expects to run about 200 meters, or about half the length of a standard high school track. Though not a far distance, he said he has worried about getting winded or falling.

"My students will read this and they'll say, 'Clark is OK, but he is a little overweight,' " he said. "At one point, they were talking about running on cobblestone streets, and I thought, 'Oh great, I'll be the guy who falls.' "