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Themed with ‘The Future of Business Education in the U.S. and China’, the Stanford China Economic Forum 2020 was held online on October 16 (Friday). Three Deans from the world-leading Business Schools were invited to the event to share their insights, including Professor Hongbin Cai, Dean of HKU Business School, Professor Ann Harrison, The Bank of America Dean of Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, together with Jonathan Levin, The Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.

As the world begins to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, these challenging times call for more dialogue and collaborations across public health, education, government and business. The Stanford China Economic Forum aims at gathering business experts and scholars to promote dialogue, an open exchange of ideas, and collaboration across institutes, districts and countries. During the Forum, the Deans discussed the upcoming teaching and learning trends under various challenges brought by the pandemic, the rising tensions between China and US and the social movements. The ways on how to adapt and respond to all external factors that affect Education, as well as providing the best learning environment amidst major global incidents were the key focuses of the Forum.

A coin has two sides; and crisis always creates opportunities. Professor Hongbin Cai, Dean of HKU Business School believes that the wide use of remote teaching technologies during this challenging period will not be able to replace the tradition face-to-face teaching, however, will certainly add value to the future mode of teaching even after the pandemic. ‘Some of the teaching methods and technologies we are using now offer flexibilities to students and provide more effective ways to keep the class together,’ He said.

‘The current hybrid mode adopted allows students to participate in class despite the limitation of quarantine policies, travel restrictions or tight schedules for working students. In lectures with large group of students, technology also helps to encourage interaction between students and the lecturer. Students could raise their questions though the chatroom and get their queries settled.’  

Professor Cai also appreciated the efforts by Stanford University for organising this Forum during his wrap-up speech. ‘This is a very good opportunity for facilitating the collaboration between academics and students, across China and the US. As Hong Kong is a truly international place and HKU is a truly international university, I am looking forward to building a stronger collaboration across the Pacific Ocean. It is vital for us to build a stronger community to house people from different backgrounds sharing different views, and to mutually respect each other.’