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The School of Business’ new strategic plan for the years 2021-2024 includes four new key strategic initiatives, which have been set to ensure that the School meets the ambitious goals set out in the new strategy. The key strategic initiatives are fully in line with the Aalto University living strategy for the same period but emphasize those priorities that are particularly relevant for the School of Business.

Associate Dean of teaching and education Tomas Falk leads the actions within the strategic initiative educational renewal with lifewide learning. He explains why this initiative was chosen as one of the four strategic initiatives:

‘Our School has a full portfolio of Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD programs. In addition, the School actively contributes to executive education. While student ratings and participant feedback generally point to high satisfaction levels with our teaching, there is a need to further develop our educational offering.’

Tomas Falk sees three main reasons behind this need.

‘Firstly, we plan for a significant growth in the student intake in the upcoming years and to manage this growth while upholding high quality in teaching and learning, we need to assure that our program portfolio remains attractive and also uses the available resources effectively. Secondly, to further enhance our social impact and to foster exchange with the business world, the lifewide learning initiative aims at providing professionals a better access to our course offerings. And thirdly, we strive to promote diversity at our school, which in turn requires us to create a multi-faceted program portfolio that is appealing to a wide range of candidates.’

The School of Business highlights four concrete action points in order to implement the planned educational renewal with lifewide learning.

‘To start, the renewal of our educational offering further promotes multidisciplinary degree programs within the School of Business and with other Aalto Schools. Moreover, developing our digital education and learning skills encompasses investments in state-of-the-art know-how, infrastructure, and teaching materials, such as virtual reality case studies and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). As a third action, we want to ensure that our courses cover the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in order to live up to our idea of “better business, better society” and finally, we continue to focus on holistic wellbeing by continuously trying to improve the sense of community and the sense for diversity and inclusion in our School’, Tomas Falk explains.

In the School of Business strategic plan, the strategic initiative educational renewal with lifewide learning is described in the following way:

We will have a globally attractive program portfolio that addresses needs of society and business community. We make an impact through a lifetime with a program portfolio and curricula that simultaneously serve degree education and lifewide learning. We run a manageable number of high-quality courses which allows for the growth of both degree student intake and lifewide learning activities. We use technology to reach our learning audience efficiently.

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The four new strategic initiatives of the School of Business are:

• Educational renewal with life-wide learning
• Cutting-edge research and infrastructure
• Community wellbeing
• Sustainability