TAMIM ELBASHA
Director of Learning & Quality Development
LEARNING & QUALITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT
2022 was a year full of projects for the LQD Department, which launched the APEL offering, renewed the labels and other certifications held by the school, produced teaching content, including an entire semester on-line, established as well as accredited the Lighthouse programme and worked, in particular, in concert with The Shift Project.
20
The number of Audencia permanent professors, members of the 1st cohort of the Lighthouse programme, as part of the development of the faculty’s expertise. The 2nd cohort is scheduled for April 2023.
How would you assess 2022?
2022 witnessed many successes. First and foremost, we worked with different players at the school to produce an entire semester on-line, as well as other asynchronous content for training executives. We then set up and certified the training programme dedicated to professors: Lighthouse. The first group commenced this curriculum in February 2022. Our institutional data and rankings team has worked to give the best possible picture of the school while identifying areas where we still need to improve.
This unit has today been identified as a source for external institutional reporting (e.g., CEFDG, ETOP) as well as internal reporting (e.g., occupational integration data, various student related statistics, etc.). In 2022, we officially launched the APEL offering (accreditation of prior experiential learning), which has benefitted from external recognition for its quality. Finally, our team masterminded the renewal of existing certifications and recognitions (Qualiopi, RNCP, Bachelor), as well as obtaining French Education Ministry recognition for two new programmes: a Bachelor with the design school and an MSc, making it an especially intense year! In tandem, the work we coordinated with The Shift Project regarding sustainable development skills and how to implement them has been acclaimed by players in the sector and beyond. I have it on good authority that many institutions look to our experience at Audencia as a model for moving this important issue forward.
In institutional terms, 2022 was a year in which Audencia took stock of the many initiatives that were underway since 2021 and it was certainly a time for reflection and determining priorities. We were also able to grasp how people and society have changed after the intense period of the COVID pandemic. Larger teams and cross-disciplinary projects have also meant that we have had to adjust our working habits. Indeed, this adaptation process is still ongoing.
What is your vision for 2023?
Now that we are halfway through our strategic plan, this year will allow us to focus on the implementation of several ECOS 2025 priority projects. I also think it is a challenging year in terms of broader trends: the landscape of higher education in France is moving more and more rapidly towards the questions of skills rather than knowledge. We have also set ourselves the challenge of meeting sustainable development issues in our teaching and practices.
Finally, after a period – which is actually still ongoing – of questioning the role of business schools at international level, I hope that we have returned to the heart of the debate thanks to highlighting the content of our offer and its quality, which has been made possible by the talent of the faculty members as well as the rest of the staff.
What are your goals for the completion of the strategic plan, within the scope of the ECOS plan?
Between now and the end of the strategic plan, we will continue to work with the programmes and teaching staff to improve our learners’ experience, by increasingly integrating on-line and remote learning, as well as creating, alongside the Finance & Operations Division, facilities that encourage active learning.
At the same time, we are continuing to experiment with some of the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence, in cooperation with the DTIS division, to support our teaching work. For example, we will explore the possibility of automated marking of our students’ exams or providing a personalised learning experience.
Consequently, technology has to help us go further and faster; I think we have to experiment and make sure of the benefits of tools before we deploy them. In the coming years, we will continue to work closely with the Academic Division and teaching staff to improve shared practices through peer learning community methods. We will continue to represent the best image of Audencia in the rankings and intensify our skills analysis with regard to institutional data. Lastly, centralising of quality certifications and accreditations will be completed in 2023, and we will work on stream-lining quality processes and procedures in order to facilitate the work of our colleagues.
What are your CSR commitments?
Firstly, we attach great importance to supporting, and even proposing, our teaching staff’s initiatives to integrate sustainable development into their teaching. As such, we follow the recommendations stemming from our partnership with The Shift Project, to boost teaching innovation in our programmes. Our cross-disciplinary ambition is also to continue reducing our digital carbon footprint (the LQD won the internal challenge of Digital Clean-up Week in 2021) through responsible best practices.
EMMANUEL MOYON
APEL Manager / Learning & Teaching Development Manager
APEL at Audencia: progress and ambitions
“2022 presented the opportunity to review the progress of Audencia’s APEL offer, which is a genuine issue for occupational training and apprenticeship authority France Compétences. Thanks to the cooperation of a dozen Divisions in building its model and through its validation in early March, the offer proposed for our 9 RNCP titles is now integrated and supported by a strong dynamic. Indeed, its development has led to the publication of 3 articles in the AEF, Centre Inffo and Studyrama as well as arousing the curiosity of the DGESIP (the French general directorate for higher education and professional integration). Audencia is also jointly leading a working group on the subject at the CDEFM conference. Included in Audencia’s strategy, APEL reinforces our support for people aiming gain certification of their experience and also acculturates Audencia to skills-based approaches. The promise it offers is attractive and motivating, but its course remains unknown, and the interest it arouses is all too rarely followed by sufficiently qualified projects. Our ambitions and guiding lights for 2023 are to reach out to targeted prospects and make a success of it by accompanying twenty candidates.”
