The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) organized their Annual HR Conclave recently at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

Prof Ashish Nanda, in his inaugural address, mentioned that “IIMA plans to amalgamate classroom experience with digital technology so as to evolve a blended learning model”. He spoke of the democratization of knowledge transfer through MOOCs but also concerns about quality. Executive Education is becoming a key part of the "learn some earn some" trajectory of most professionals' careers. Prof. Nanda emphasized that ‘the IIMA Executive Education is committed to embracing digital technology to enable effective learning by participants.’

Mr. Pranav Kothari, in his keynote address, highlighted the unique ability of digitization in helping achieve personalisation and micro assessment. He shared how the limitations of current pedagogy could be balanced through firm, speedier and reliable feedback mechanisms to provide an equal platform - regardless of abilities. He discussed how the fundamentals of learning remained intact while digitalization played the role of a teacher/facilitator for faster learning processes. The inaugural session ended with Prof Morris bringing out the linkages of executive education and digitization in his address and Prof Varkkey proposing the vote of thanks.

The first panel discussion titled “Learning Challenges in the Digital World” was chaired by IIMA’s Prof. Amit Karna with panel members consisting of Mr. Anish Srikrishna, President, Times Centre for Learning Ltd; Mr. Aniruddha Tewari, Corporate Project Manager, Amdocs and Mr. Kamlesh Vyas, Director – People Advisory, Ernst & Young.

The panel discussion focussed on understanding the need for the role of the facilitator, the intrinsic motivation of the participant, the need for blended learning to leverage the advantages and best of both the learning experiences while forming a community of the stakeholders consisting of the learners, designers and facilitators to work together to create a learning experience par excellence in the changing times.

Post the panel discussion, Prof. Sebastian Morris unveiled the annual calendar of IIMA’s Executive Education and introduced the courses IIMA would be undertaking in the blended learning space, with 3 courses being offered with Hughes Global Education and 2 with NIIT Imperia as the digital technology partners.

The second panel discussion titled “Digitization and Future of Organisation” chaired by IIMA’s Prof Sunil Sharma had a panel consisting of Dr. Babu Lal, Executive Director Corporate Learning and Development, BHEL; Mr. Manish Chawla, GM, Global Industrial Products, IBM and Mr. Jagdamba Prasad Joshi, HR Business Partner, Schneider Electric. The panel discussion focussed on the adaptability of the organization to digitization, the future of technology, and technology as an enabler, not a complete solution for training.