We are delighted to share that Dr Rikke Duus has won the UCL Provost Education Award 2021 for the ‘Outstanding Response to Teaching during a Pandemic’. The award recognises Rikke’s exceptional contributions to the learning experience and success of UCL School of Management students as well as other participating students from across UCL faculties. In such a challenging year, Rikke has led multiple innovative initiatives and gone above and beyond to deliver a high-quality digital learning experience for students.

Rikke saw the pivot to online teaching as an exciting challenge to develop a specialised teaching model which has since been published in the Harvard Business Publishing Education and proves to be an excellent example of how to provide engaging and impactful digital education.

Upon receiving the award Rikke said: 

“I am very pleased to be a recipient of this prestigious award this year. The Higher Education sector must respond to the changing landscape and adapt to meet the emerging learning requirements of our students. For more than 10 years, I have been engaged in using innovative learning and teaching techniques to create exciting and impactful experiences for learners across undergraduate, postgraduate and executive audiences. During the pandemic, I had the opportunity to re-think my approach to designing learning experiences in ways that would meet the challenges of online and remote learning. I saw this as an opportunity for us to accelerate innovation, experiment and test new ideas. I very much appreciate that UCL School of Management provided a highly supportive environment that allowed us to become ‘educational entrepreneurs’.

I strongly believe that our role as educators in Higher Education must continue to evolve. Not just to design and deliver relevant content, but also to ensure heightened engagement and excitement amongst our learners. We must help students build and develop new skills, some of which are now essential to successfully operate in a diverse and hyperconnected digital environment. As part of my approach to digital education, I introduced the ‘3Cs of Async’ framework published by Harvard Business Publishing Education, in which I propose that the modern academic in Higher Education can take on three roles; namely to be a ‘Creator’, ‘Curator’ and ‘Connector’. Whilst the 3Cs underpinned my learning and teaching approach, impactful digital education combines a number of educational elements across asynchronous and synchronous modes, including a specially designed Digital Peer-Learning Hub and the use of multiple collaborative digital platforms for real-time engagement and teamwork. I found that this holistic approach fuelled the students’ engagement and drove their inquisitiveness to learn in new ways.

And it works…

A key aspect of Rikke’s methodology is to invite external speakers to present to the class, which has clearly been welcomed by students and has resulted in an alignment of ideas and concepts with the realities of work, engaging with organisational challenges in a digital world. Feedback from The UCL MBA cohort, all working executives who as experienced professionals have high expectations for their learning and development outcomes, has been extremely positive and demonstrates that Rikke’s teaching methods are a clear fit with students’ realities.  

Rikke plans to continue developing her teaching techniques and will remain at the forefront of innovation to support the transformation of the education model. She said: “Looking ahead to the future, I believe we will adopt a hybrid approach to education, combining digital async material, online sync/live sessions alongside face-to-face workshop-based sessions, facilitated by digitally-charged assessments, teamwork and collaborative learning. Over the years, I have put much emphasis on connecting educational learning experiences with industry/practice and cutting-edge research insight and the pandemic gave me an opportunity to further intensify this collaborative approach, which enabled a broadening of learning experiences for our students.”

We are extremely proud of Rikke and are delighted that her work to innovate digital education and engagement has been recognised by the UCL Provost Awards. 

See the full list of winners on the UCL Student Union Website