Digitalization is one of the most important forward-looking topics and is already having a lasting impact on the way we work and live today. Everyone is talking about it, but in many cases that’s just where it ends: people talk about digitalization, but there is often a lack of concrete implementation. Munich Business School is taking a different approach here. In its digitalization workshops, which were conducted for the first time in two bachelor’s and master’s courses in the fall semester 2020, students are encouraged to actively apply and understand digitalization and digital technologies.
The digitalization workshops are another component of Munich Business School’s innovative teaching and learning environment and are based on the Digital Business Foundation stream of the Learning Lab “Digital Technologies”. The aim of these workshops is to teach students technology skills by “grasping” functionalities and architectures of technological devices that are not directly visible, reflecting on them and implementing them using concrete projects.
Vice Dean Prof. Dr. Patricia Kraft emphasizes the importance of this competence: “At MBS, we are convinced that the concrete application of technologies and digitalization tools by our students provides them with a decisive added value in their studies and for their career entry. In this context, it is important not only to discuss it, but to get hands-on ourselves.”
Besides the technology, the workshop thus focuses on the students and their own application-oriented and creative work. In small groups, students first learn how to install an AWS server step by step by means of various assignments, on which they then build their own web presence with various plugins and functionalities using WordPress. Thanks to video break-out sessions and supporting platforms such as Nuclino and Microsoft Teams for information exchange, it all works very well digitally. The lecturers are available throughout this whole process as coaches.
The first embedding of the digital business foundation workshops by MBS professors Dr. Anne Tryba and Dr. Sophie Hieke in the individual course programs of the courses Product Lifecycle Management in the bachelor’s program and International Service Marketing in the master’s program International Business was a complete success: Within only one workshop day, the students realized numerous creative websites for their respective course projects.
Some examples of the designed websites
Bachelor’s student Lena Oettle gets a lot out of the workshop: “I really enjoyed the workshop because it was very practically oriented and gave me the opportunity to learn something new. My conclusion: building and designing a website can be very complex and detail-oriented, requiring a lot of time and patience. This experience opened my eyes to what it takes to create a functioning website, something I don’t usually think about when scrolling through the internet in my daily life.”
It is planned to successively integrate this and other streams into the curricula of all MBS programs in the future. Keep it digital!
