Gandarilla argues the focus should be achieving business results first. “We need to expand our mind to understand that a corporate university may not be a collection of classes or a curriculum,” he said. “A good corporate university knows how to listen and identify problems, come up with solutions and respond to the changing environment of the business that it operates in — whether that’s with traditional classes or not.”

However, Palmer said he wouldn’t bifurcate curriculum from business process execution. “One should complement and lead to the other if you’re doing the first right,” he said. Either way, most learning leaders agree executive leadership needs to be heavily involved in the corporate university so the university’s guiding principles align with those of the company’s.

At several organizations, including AT&T and Northwell Health, many C-suite executives are faculty of the corporate university. Northwell Health’s Gallo said the leader-as-teacher model is effective at getting the senior leaders in front of employees. “It also helps drive culture change, which is another fundamental purpose of a corporate university,” she added. Palmer said having leaders drive the curriculums about leadership development helps employees understand where the business is going.

Changing with Technology

During the past 10 years, Harburg said the digitization of business and the use of technology have dramatically changed the nature of how consumers and businesses operate. “And if you look 25 years ago, it looks like we’re on a different planet,” he said.

“The whole notion of algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning — to put those things in the context of the dignity of the human being, of the protection of privacy and of the great need for us to honor the diversity and uniqueness of people — that’s a huge challenge for the university to take on,” Harburg said. He said corporate universities should step up and develop a point of view to help with ethical, moral and technical dilemmas that technology brings.

Gandarilla said new technologies like augmented reality will aid in performance support-type training. He said a long-term focus for the universities will become to develop soft skills and partner with employees as technologies and businesses change. “Imagine you’re going through a change, they put you through the corporate university and support you in the transition — that’s the future,” he said. Gandarilla said the notion of a static corporate university must go away; it has to be agile and nimble to adjust to the needs of the time.

During the past year, AT&T has begun rolling out augmented reality and virtual reality in their curriculum. “Anytime you can take the physical and turn it virtual, that will drive a lot of speed and accessibility into any business that’s out there,” Palmer said.

Gallo said the future of the corporate university should be about the application of knowledge and the assessment of that application through case-based learning. “Back in the day, lecture was king. Now lecture is one of the last thing’s that’s effective,” she said. “What would have been lectured now goes out as pre-work. We trust our employees to acquire that knowledge by themselves. They don’t need to be spoon-fed through a lecture.”

(May 3, 2018 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/05/03/future-corporate-un...)