20 September 2011. The conference on “Competence development in different learning cultures” will take place on the Executive Campus HSG on 29 and 30 September 2011. In the course of the conference, educational experts will be talking about the future of teaching and learning. The speakers will include Frederik G. Pferdt from Google Learning Labs in Ireland.

Competencies for professional life

“We primarily want to develop competencies, not merely knowledge and facts,” says Prof. Dr. Sabine Seufert about the strategic orientation of the Institute of Business Education and Educational Management at the HSG. In the last ten years, a crucial contribution to this has been made by the supplementary course in Business Education at the HSG. The Institute was set up in 1971 by HSG Professor Rolf Dubs. In the 40 years of its existence, it has made continuous progress in research, development and teaching. “The focus is no longer only on the question as to how economic interconnections can be communicated in class but also on how we can profile education in schools, enterprises and universities,” says Prof. Dr. Dieter Euler, who has occupied the Chair of Business Education and Educational Management at the HSG since 2000.

Shaping university education

In 2003, the Institute set up the Swiss Centre for Innovations in Learning (scil) for the purpose of developing new approaches to teaching in-house executive education. This Centre supports companies in the improvement of educational quality. With the Bologna reforms, the question of how to improve teaching and degree courses at universities has attracted more attention. “With regard to teaching, universities must look over their own shoulders and use their own research and development resources to reinforce their teaching profiles,” says Euler about the new strategic focus of the IWP.