Using a blended online program to teach professional innovation skills and promote peer interaction

Abstract

Teaching innovative and creative skills has challenged educators across multiple industries, and teaching these skills in an online format has often seemed exceedingly difficult. This paper, describes a unique collaboration between Stanford's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate program, and a large multi-national company to deliver a blended program to over 700 of its global talent pool of high potential managers. The program was designed to enhance innovative and creative skills, and was delivered through face to face, online, and live virtual educational experiences. One of the key components of the program, was a series of live virtual events, delivered by Stanford instructors and company executives, and designed to achieve a few objectives: review the content of each online course completed by participants, demonstrate ways to apply the content to the company's work environment, and promote peer discussion and group feedback on the content application. The paper will share some key characteristics and design principles that informed the development and delivery of these live virtual events, some best practices that were gleaned from conducting 56 live virtual events of this sort for the program, and some examples of how the peer and team interaction proved vital to the success of these learning experiences focusing on teaching innovative and creative practices.