The educational offering for companies moves completely online in the face of restrictions due to Covid-19. A passage facilitated by a teaching method conceived to be versatile, flexible and at the service of companies, as Davide Chiaroni explains

Education doesn’t stop. It continues, but online. This is also true for the Corporate Education offering of MIP Politecnico di Milano which, already largely based on a digital experience, accentuated this characteristic to meet the needs of companies. «The experience we gained in recent years with D Hub, our e-learning platform, not only allows us to continue to make our educational offering available», explains Davide Chiaroni, Associate Dean for Corporate Relations at MIP, «but also to remodel it on the basis of unforeseen needs that emerged during the Covid-19 spread».

Take advantage of time for

There were three lines that MIP decided to pursue in this extremely delicate period. «In the first place, we wanted to show that we were there for our businesses. We did so by broadcasting through our digital channels a free webinar on the impact the coronavirus is having on the economy, addressing urgent issues such as smart working or the supply chain in this moment marked by such a significant disruption», explains Chiaroni. «The second front will be opened shortly: it involves the D-Hub Management Skills platform, available until the end of 2020, which will house the over 950 clips produced by our business school. It’s an initiative aimed at employees, company collaborators, associations and foundations. A real ad hoc library at the service of companies, a tool with which to transform this period of exceptional difficulty into an opportunity to relaunch through the training of one’s human resources». Lastly, a third point: «While on one hand some companies have reduced their business, on the other many companies in specific areas such as the pharmaceutical or financial sector found themselves faced with the task of managing data and projects at a much faster pace. This means that people need to be trained to act in a faster and more efficient manner. For them we are making the effort to further redesign our digital educational offering, because that foreseen for the physical classroom is clearly not practicable at this time».

Understanding and acting: the Corporate offering

However, our course offering isn’t changing. The last two years, in particular, have been characterized by strong demand for courses tied to digital transformation, big data and analytics, but also to the world of marketing and e-commerce: «There are two axes that guide our offering, Understanding and Acting. The part tied to Understanding has the goal of helping companies to understand the changes underway, the challenges they face and their training needs». Acting instead, says Chiaroni, has a more operational approach: «These are more in-depth and longer programmes, with the purpose of transferring skills, knowledge, ways of taking concrete action». These two lines intersect with a transversal axis, that of the target: «In both cases, our courses cover the needs of both of more junior and senior managers».

A platform conceived for the Corporate world

Educational flexibility and versatility are possible thanks especially to a strong digital identity. A path undertaken already in 2014 and which in 2019 took shape with the inauguration of the D Hub platform: «It was created with the corporate universe in mind. We wanted a platform that could be fully used when someone is on the move, which could be accessed with the corporate login, and that would integrate all the necessary educational tools. We offer hundreds of digital capsule courses, recently expanded and created also thanks to the participation of companies. There are videos that include evaluation tests, in addition to metrics that allow us to evaluate the educational effectiveness of the capsule courses themselves, and therefore to fine-tune and improve them. Our goal is to provide an education that is truly digital, and not simply computerized», concludes Chiaroni.