Ashridge Executive Education conducted an interview with Rob Mason, the chief technology officer (CTO) at Hult International Business School, to explore his thoughts on the importance of relationships between learning professionals and their IT departments.
Rob has been in his position at Hult for three years and his role spans all parts of the technology spectrum across Hult and Ashridge Executive Education. From a business school context, Ashridge has key clients in the academic world, corporate customers and, importantly, our learners. Thus, how we deliver learning products and the learning objectives within those products is a key part of our technology teams’ responsibility.
There has been a formidable evolution over the last few years of learning platforms that academics use, which organisations buy, and that are now actually almost self-service. A few years ago, it was the IT department that had to do anything and everything that was technology-based. However, the technology world is now moving so rapidly that end users can today use those platforms with more ease, administrators can set up new users and in some cases can build learning courses themselves. As a result, for CTOs such as Rob, and their technology teams, their modus operandi needs to adapt as well. Technology specialists within each respective organisation need to improve their behaviour and the manner in which they partner with those involved in learning technology – be that the clients, the academics, the faculty or the learners themselves.
To see the interview, please click here.