The MBA "Management" at the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics at the Hochschule Niederrhein is characterized by manageable group sizes and, above all, by the regular meetings of students and lecturers on Friday afternoons and Saturdays. The direct exchange between lecturers and students on attendance days is seen as very beneficial and positive by both sides. However, in times of no contact and closed seminar rooms, the courses now have to be held online as well. A first "online presence" in the started summer semester 2020 was organized by the university teacher / lecturer Prof. Martin Wenke in the context of the module "Macroeconomic Influences". "Since the MBA students already had extensive experience with online meetings, video conferences, webinars, data clouds and similar digital communication and information tools in their professional environment, it is not a big hurdle for them at first to actively participate in online lectures as well," was Prof. Wenke 's experience after the first session. Online teaching is supported by the MOODLE teaching and learning management system, which provides students with the materials used for teaching education, such as teaching letters, video teaching sequences and current information from science and economic policy. Since this system is also regularly used for classroom teaching, there was no additional effort for the lecturer, at least here.
In terms of content, Prof. Wenke's MBA module regularly takes up current issues from national and international economic policy. While in the past these were topics such as the"BREXIT" or the international upheavals of Donald Trump's erratic economic policy (also known as "Trumponomics"), this semester the economic effects of the Corona crisis will be discussed. Prof. Wenke's main goal is for students to understand what negative impact mechanisms are triggering this health crisis in German and international economies, what are the presumed compensatory effects of the already announced rescue measures such as liquidity assistance for small and medium-sized enterprises, and what response options can be envisaged by companies themselves. "As in the course of the 2008/2009 global financial crisis, one of the greater challenges in this crisis is to correctly assess the dynamics that exist in the overall economy. For this reason, the tool of scenario analysis is often used, as the German Council of Economic Experts has just done with its recently published report." With this report, Prof. Wenke has another highly topical source of information, which he will discuss with the students in the next online seminars.
