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Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 16(4), 13-23, October-December 2014 13

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ABSTRACT

This teaching system was built on materials prepared by experts in biotechnology and management with the contribution of the students themselves, engendered by their discussions about real life based business situ-ations. This system is fully supported by the resources available within the Moodle platform, especially the adaptability of content depending on the profile of the students. But this system goes beyond this. It promotes constant teacher-student and student-student interaction; it achieves this by using all the possibilities offered by the network, by using an approach that stimulates participation in different forums and recommends a series of scheduled tasks based upon the company they work for. The goal of this system is to organize and take advantage of all the available knowledge, and especially that which the students themselves build in each edition, so that the following edition participants can profit from it.

Formation of Managers of Biotechnology Companies:

A “Presentual” (Presential and Virtual) Environment for Learning

María José Peset Gonzalez, Department of Business Economics, University Carlos III, Getafe, Spain

César Ullastres García, Department of Business Innovation, EOI Business School, Madrid, Spain

Key Words: Adaptability, Directive Formation, Social Web, Technological Based Companies

1. INTRODUCTION

The Foundation for the development of research in genomics and proteomics in Spain, “Genoma España”, (2001-2013) had among its main goals the promotion of the biotechnology industry. To achieve this, it launched a program to create biotechnology-based companies. The results were extraordinary. In twelve years the number

of biotechnology-based companies grew by 459%, as outlined in the ICONO - FECYT report of Indicators of the Science, Technology and Innovation (ICONO-FECYT, 2013) that uses the data from the “Relevance of Biotechnol-ogy in Spain 2011” report (Genoma España, 2011). According to data from the European employers association in 2013, the Spanish biotech industry reached eighth place in the

DOI: 10.4018/jcit.2014100102


14 Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 16(4), 13-23, October-December 2014

Western world. This was truly a “prodigious decade” (J. Barrero, 2013) in which companies, defined as financial instruments that show whether ideas work or not, have consolidated an internationally competitive biotechnology industry in Spain.

However, something was missing. Its pro-moters, mostly scientists with a very specialized knowledge in one of the technologies - some of them more than a century old - that contribute to biotechnology (Muñoz, E., 1998), lacked a general knowledge in business management. Some of these technologies are biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, genetics, cell ther-apy, the neurosciences, and productive connec-tions between these disciplines and physical and chemical techniques and technologies: X -ray spectroscopy (crystallography), nuclear mag-netic resonance, fluorescence, photonics, and those derived from computational analysis that in the end integrates them into complex fields such as genomics and proteomics, systemic and synthetic biology, bioengineering applied to medicine, nutrition science and countless industrial processes. This lack of business skills was identified as a problem in their relation-ship with investors, who are necessary agents to the consolidation of their businesses. This is precisely why Genoma España launched an ambitious training project to teach management techniques to biotech executives that ought to be capable to teach its participants the neces-sary skills for dealing with the venture capital professionals.

Now we will present and describe this experience, in the following order: the design-ing of the educational process, and then the evaluation of the results obtained in the nine editions of this project. This will be done by dividing this article in three parts the first being the characteristics of the course and its peda-gogical context. Then, the different learning strategies used will be explained, together with the results of the educational evaluation about the learning process.

2. CHARACTERISTICS AND PEDAGOGICAL CONTEXT OF THE COURSE

2.1. Characteristics

The Management Training Course of Genoma España that began in 2008 is the result of an educational research project that involved the DMAMI (of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) and the CICEI (of the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) along with pro-fessional experts in the field of biotechnology, developed a training system based on action and participation. It follows the usual format of Management Development Programs. It´s spe-cifically designed for professionals from biotech companies. The course lasts four months and to date there have been nine editions and 247 students. 229 of them completed it successfully.

This course is intended for C-level directors or high-potential employees in biotech compa-nies that, due to their close collaboration with senior management, need to face high-level problems and situations and to have an overall view of their organization.

The core of this training system is the discussion of a case study. The students start working on texts that combine the experience of three Spanish biotech companies whose main problem was the search for funding and, as the course advances, they are divided in groups, each working on the challenges of the company that most resembles the professional and personal situation of the student and the life cycle of the company she works for. It also involves the creation of a micro social network structured as a system with learning goals to meet.

Throughout the first two months of the course, the students discuss the three companies´ challenges in a structured way: they analyze the driving idea of each business, its business model, its financial situation and the way it is organized. Over the next two months, the students are divided in groups, each working with what best suits their professional interests



and their companies´ predictable evolution. At the end of the course, each group has to hand in a business plan for the company chosen as if they had to face investors in a round of funding. During this process each student will contribute their particular view, opinions and expertise to the group. Then, they will create a new business plan that could be presented to an investor to expedite a new round of funding.

It is precisely at this point that the adaptabil-ity of the course is essential, for any technology company and biotechnological particularly has difficulties with the raising of capital. To raise capital is a job in itself, and biotech companies are usually small, and, therefore, they cannot afford to lose focus on this.

The specific needs of biotech companies make them dependent on a constant flow of resources, until their final product reach the market. Thus, they often have to face different rounds of investment to be able to continue their work and to ensure their growth and their very existence. To do this, they have to resort to financial institutions, venture capital investors and public and private providers of additional funds, such as equity loans or high yield bonds.

The Business Plan is a document that, besides inking what the purpose of the com-pany is and how will it be achieved, serves to generate confidence in investors, customers and suppliers. It is essential to any company to be consistent when following the Business Plan and to establish organizational guidelines that will allow them to follow the route or change it depending on the particular circumstances of the company at a given moment.

That is why the discussion of the Case Study and its related work undertaken by students throughout the course is essential. At the start of the course, each student describes himself and the company where he works, their area of work, their financial situation and their business model through a questionnaire.

In biotech there are three general busi-ness models: services, services and product or product alone. A biotech company will usually evolve from the first to the last one throughout

its life. So the students will initially work on the whole sequence and, at the end, they will create the business plan of a company that is “one step further” than the company they work for. The students take a test at the very beginning of the course, and the contents of the course are adapted accordingly, taking into account the complexity of their companies, the business model and the phase the company is currently experiencing.

In the words of Olea and Ponsoda (2002): “The fundamental characteristic of a Comput-erized Adaptive Test (CAT) is that it adapts to the progress that the student makes over time”. The CAT measures the level of expertise of the user in various fields and skills and it uses the results to adapt the program.

The discussion of the Case Study (Figure 1) starts by presenting several concepts: the business core idea, business model, funding, etc. working on each of them with a specific repository. These are presented in a sequential manner. The student is given, on screen, ad-equate content and resources related to the topic being studied. He is encouraged to participate in activities. Before moving into the next topic, the student must provide an original comment or a new idea related to the current one to prove that he understands it. The teacher is heedful at all times, and she coordinates, if necessary, the participation of all the learners in the Case Study Forum.

There are four more forums, one for each of the topics that make up the program: Strategy, Finance, International trading and Industrial and Intellectual Property. Each one has a character of its own, and it is coordinated and moderated by a teacher, who presents exercises, plans work and topic-related tasks and, from time to time, debates. The forums are timed in modular form so that the learning overlaps with the discussion of the case study.

The Teleformation Platform for biotech executives´ contents are grouped in four broad topics: Strategy, Finances, Industrial/Intellec-tual Property and International Negotiation. Each of them has a forum of its own, in which



teachers add exercises. Each of the topics is divided into chapters, modules and points, and they are usually studied by following a fixed plan: summary, supporting texts and exercises. This allows the contents to be dosed, and to be used in different ways depending on the learning needs of each individual student.

The training methodology used in the modules of Strategy and Finance places more emphasis on individually answering tasks, whereas the modules of Industrial / Intellectual Property and International Negotiation focus mainly on promoting the participation of the students by letting them ask any questions they may have, by sharing their experiences and materials, and, most importantly, by sharing any ideas they have among them.

Modules in Strategy and Finance use a methodology based on working on different

tasks (reports, essays, papers…) and complet-ing jobs, (i.e. Learning by Doing). By contrast, in the Negotiation and Intellectual / Industrial property modules, the methodology used is Guided Learning, emphasizing the organized development of the content, and the individual creation of essays, which will then be available to all the other students, so that suggestions may be made, and new insights may be provided to improve the quality of the work. The idea is to encourage students to help each other.

Three strategies are used throughout the training course: Learning by Doing, Learning by Discovery and Learning by Teaching. For these three models to achieve their highest potential, the presence of teachers behind the screen must be constant. Although this makes the results obtained extraordinary, it hinders its sustainability, for the motivation vs. retribution

Figure 1. Conceptual map of the course



of the teachers cannot be maintained over time. Because the responses and works of the students have been stored in an organized manner and they can easily be accessed by later editions, the intensity factor of the teaching load can be reduced, decreasing also the direct costs.

2.2. Pedagogical Context

2.2.1. Student-Centered

In the e-learning lexicon, learning is almost syn-onymous with taking courses. In education, it is often synonymous with academic performance i.e. getting good grades (Martínez Aldanondo J., 2011). But in reality, learning is much more complex and wonderful.

To adapt and to learn is innate (Vigotski L.S, 1997). If this is so, we have ceased to learn things we previously were interested in, just because our approach to them was blocked by a difficulty: a controlled environment that consisted in a book, a scheduled course and a teacher who bored us to death. As biologists say, we are what we are, and everything else is our relationship with the environment.

Learning is fascinating, and facilitating this process is even more so, but the training business is full of skullduggery. Technology is the perfect environment for these traps. Internet and its related technologies are an endless source of redundancies (Sáez Vacas F, 2004) which, instead of supporting, obstruct the learning pro-cesses. As Martínez Aldanondo (2011) states; “People do not learn by listening or by reading. The stale tradition that we all have experienced consists in a teacher that is supposed to know and who explains what he knows, and a group of students that supposedly listen and learn”. With technology, this becomes much more complex. If we believe that transcribing the texts read by the teacher to bytes and having the students spend some time consulting them, downloading certain documents and answering tests correctly, means they will learn, we are wrong; nothing but the opposite is true.

We learn by doing, by watching others do things, by masking mistakes, even by playing. If

we want to do that in an environment where we feel secure and we can simulate action, without risks, then we must use technology, the net, for it provides an efficient and effective way to do exactly that. In that kind of environment the roles must change, the teacher must become a mediator, a director, and a consultant for the students. The students must take on the active role. One must be truly convinced about this to make it work.

As we have mentioned before, this course has been successfully completed by 229 stu-dents. 45% of them are doctors, and 34% are the directors of their own companies. When designing this system, we had to make two important assumptions. First: a significant part of the biotech executives of the 2001 genera-tion, when there was an important surge in the sector, lacked an appropriate offer of proper management training. Some of these companies´ employees had enough potential to take on a leading role but not enough education. This was a large enough group of people to tackle the subject. Second: this lack of training was identified as an obstacle to the collaboration between science and business. Designing a course specifically for people with a scientific profile, that would familiarize them with the management and business administration meth-odologies, in the context of the development of biotechnology and other technology-based business, is considered a priority.

The necessary steps were taken to adapt contents to the specific needs expressed by the future students. In the year 2004, their training needs were studied (Ullastres C., 2004). In 2008, in a doctoral thesis of the UCM (Holgado R. 2008), a comparative study was made between Spanish biotech profiles and similar ones in Canada, taking into account the competence development of the professionals of the sector in Canada, a country with a tendency in the biotech industry that was plausible for Spanish companies to imitate in the future. The students and their needs to confront the new role they would have to take in their companies was the main focus of the whole process.



What could we do together? We decided to talk with students and to promote conversa-tions between them. This exchange had started by the end of 2008.

2.2.2. Focused On Learning

Transmitting knowledge is not something exclusively human (Dawkins R., 2002) but learning is essential to mankind. The path from knowledge to learning goes through education. Education is a personal and a social process, a process of adaptation to the environment, adaptation to the realities of each moment. Not only, of course, to the material realities. It also tries to build the culture in which civilization is based, an essential but debatable addition (Cuche D, 1999).

Nowadays, like most human processes, learning is mediated and modified by technol-ogy, but although today´s learning has all the advantages of the Universal Digital Network (Sáez Vacas, F., 2004), as a whole, it generally maintains the same structures it has always had: courses, classrooms, teachers and pupils.

We use the most common LMS (Learn-ing Management Systems) platform: Moodle. Moodle offers us a number of tools: several forums that facilitate the availability of a com-mon space where teachers and students can meet to exchange different types of information or contents; elements that help us to access differ-ent types of repositories of relevant content; and utilities that helps us plan the course, coordinate the assignment of tasks, evaluate, certificate and carry them out (Fumero, A y Sáez Vacas, F, 2013). The same old paradigms that bring us back to the old teachers´ saying: “There is more knowledge in the students that come to the school than in the teacher and the teaching materials in the closed classroom”, even when it is turned into a virtual one, extended and without walls. This system soon fell short.

From an instrumental point of view we began complementing these individual compo-nents with freely available tools, accessible on the Web; Twitter and Linkedin as elements of

communication; Dropbox as a content reposi-tory, and Google Docs as a cooperative solution to track the various challenges we proposed and that the students then made them their own, and part of their experience.

These elements, despite having today the name of relatively well-known commercial products, were not so famous then. They were part of the routine of our students in their work, and today they are standard practices of a “2.0. Teacher” (Escribano, Merelo and Tricas, 2012). They made a decisive contribu-tion to the mechanics of the course, and they turned the statement that “there was much more knowledge than what we could share among all of us” into a reality.

The knowledge that interests us here is the one that is created in the individual mind, after a process of human development based on the acquisition of existing knowledge on the Web. In social practice, information is taken to be the same as knowledge, but they are not synonyms. To have more information available means to have more opportunities to acquire knowledge, but to understand something, great personal ef-fort, time and active experimentation are needed. If that effort is led by a teacher, the process is undeniably more effective.

2.2.3. The PresenTual Formation (Sáez, F., 2006)

Forums, blogs, chats, social networks, web 2.0 and all there is yet to come, are merely tools used to develop conversations and to communicate, which is what defines our species (Marina JA, 1993). In general, in the training processes in which information technologies are the driv-ing force of the teaching, students constantly receive information, but they are not often expected to synthesize that information and enrich it with their own ideas, or reinterpret it. They are not expected to work on a project, or plan a debate in which they can argue, and the reason is that doing so would be tremendously expensive. The virtual presence of a teacher, a coordinator, or even of a student (a graduate



or former student, which has been proposed by past edition participants) at all times behind the screen, watching everything that happens in the course, facilitates the interaction between all the participants, and it stimulates the creative power of information exchange. But, in the long term, it is not affordable.

Learning platforms such as Moodle, have been studying for a while the implementation of conditionals. They make possible the emergence of sequenced content depending on whether the student has done certain jobs, like submitting a paper, participate in a forum, sent a chat, and downloaded a document (R. Rubio, 2009). Even as it optimizes what a computer does best, to count, it lacks the necessary emotional compo-nent to encourage the student in the loneliness of his screen.

Any methodical learning process tends to minimize the effort the students have to make to gain certain knowledge and yet, to make an effort is something unavoidable to acquire knowledge. All learning processes are based on known methodologies, many of them revolving around the paradigm of being centered on the student and the field of educational innovation, as stated by Ángel Fidalgo (2007). They pri-marily seek to reduce the effort associated with these methodologies, in other words, to make them effective without increasing the effort the teacher currently makes. Are not we forgetting, that it is in the students where the power to learn lies? Is the contribution of old students preserved, or does it slowly fade away in the teachers´ memories and it is never again used?

As remarked by F. Sáez Vacas y A. Fumero (1997), for an individual to obtain knowledge, and starting from the assumption that the only valid knowledge is that which builds on the learner´s personality, the first requirement is that the individual has to want to learn. Once he wants to learn, he has to find the right in-formation for each topic. This, thanks to the Internet, is fairly easy; everything is online. Then he must make an effort to analyze and understand the acquired information, and here, the huge amount of information on the Internet

can be a problem, a source that produces noth-ing but noise.

This is part of a circuit of knowledge (Figure 2): information → effort → Knowledge → ef-fort →action (Sáez Vacas F., 1991). The zenith of the circuit lays in the action, which comes from knowledge and effort, being the action, in some cases, a materialization of knowledge, e.g. knowing how to analyze the position of a company in its sector, being familiar with accountants´ terminology, or knowing how to negotiate with people from other cultures.

Might not it be that we are missing some-thing? Might it not be that what we call noise is a form of knowledge that has to do with infor-mal training systems increasingly accessible in which any questions you have has an answer? (Cobo C., Moravec, W. 2011). Overusing the Internet, even when knowing what one is do-ing and the path to go still exposes oneself to a multitude of stimuli that can be a source of curiosity and spur new processes. Understand-ing the complex is not easy, we only know that to do so we must avoid the analysis that reduce the whole to just the components.

When addressing this issue, the effort is focused on the construction and development of a true learning community, which at the end of the course we named a “PressenTual” En-vironment, because it has the physical and the virtual presence of the teacher simultaneously.

In this model of PressenTual training, the systematic collection of the information provided by each student´s learning process is the beginning of a new cycle in the circuit, so that each student clarifies and enriches the necessary sources for conducting actions.

If this model were to be introduced as a part of one of those processes of educational intervention, the need to generate sources of information or specific information for the teaching- learning process should be regarded as essential. We must consider the directed personal effort of students as the driving force that makes this circuit stay tuned.



3. DESCRIPTION AND RESULTS

During this training experience we have used different learning strategies: Learning by Do-ing, Learning by Discovery, and Learning by Teaching. During the course we have used a large amount of classic materials that have ensured interaction between students and teach-ers and among students themselves. In Guided Learning, students were encouraged to use the materials available on the Internet and making new contributions from their finding, so that the available materials are enriched in each of the modules.

The uniqueness of this system lies in the treatment of students at the beginning. At the start of the course, students answer a question-naire in which they write their peculiarities and their companies´; how big is it, (number of employees), whether or not they own patents, if they have agreed to one or more funding rounds, whether it focuses on products or services (or both) and whether their technology is applied to

any of the different subsectors of biotechnology (human health, animal health, food, industrial processes or environment). This allows us to pre-classify them and allows the platform (using the experience gained in the previous editions) to modify the frequency and nature of the tasks that will be given to the students, offering to each one the most adequate solution for their situation.

We use the same techniques as in the social networks in the working environment. The role of teachers is limited primarily to information management and the handling of relationships between students, and it materializes in three areas:

• Sharing information. The social web pro-vides the necessary resources for students to share their work.

• Sharing resources. Identifying opportuni-ties to share useful resources to perform tasks. Resources might be bibliography

Figure 2. Knowledge circuit



references, links, raw information or documents.

• Sharing the results. Promoting an open attitude to share results, mainly through blogs, news services, or repositories.

3.1. Results

As we have mentioned before, more than 30% of the leaders of biotechnology companies in our country have gone through this training experience. We have also noted that 45% of the 229 students are doctors.

Given that taking this course did not imply the acquisition of any formal qualifications, the main element of evaluation were: a satisfaction survey, measuring the number (repetition) of students per company, and the participation in Linkedin forums, created for this purpose, after the course was over. The results of the survey showed the highest degree of satisfaction.

Regarding the strategies used, around 20% of the students preferred Guided Learning, based in the resolution of exercises, the per-sonalized attention and the giving of solutions to the questions asked by the teacher. Nearly 30% of the students stated that Learning by Discovering, based on knowing and studying the contents, discussing and sharing everything, was the best feature. To learn by Doing, through working on an exercise over the whole period, obtained 20%. The Guided Exploration got 20%, based on the personal evaluation of the options presented by the teacher and the rest of the students. Finally, Learning by Teaching, having each student present their work to the rest, obtained about 10%.

Currently, about one hundred executives from Spanish biotechnology companies are involved in a professional Linkedin group, sharing information, proposing public projects and creating new initiatives in the management of their companies. Beyond the higher or lower satisfaction expressed in the survey at the end of the course, the fact that they continue working together seems to be the most relevant element in this educational experience.

4. CONCLUSION

The intensity of the relationship between the information technologies and the field of education is not something recent. It has gone through different stages, each marked by a dif-ferent model to improve the teaching-learning process, like Tele-teaching or distance educa-tion, Computer Assisted teaching, E-Learning and Blended Learning or B-learning.

In each case, different technologies have been added, from the magnetic audio and video tapes to laptops, tablets and whiteboards, through videoconferencing or instant messag-ing. Today we talk about E -Learning 2.0 and Technology -Enhanced Learning (TEL).

All these models and associated meta-phors have integrated, not only the different technologies available, but also different peda-gogical theories, starting with the traditionally known ones in the in the field of educational psychology´s literature: behaviorism, construc-tivism or social constructivism.

Changes of ‘paradigm’, announced and demanded in the in educational environment have articulated for decades around elements such as the mission and goals of educational institutions, the structure of the educational processes, its cost and productivity, the roles of the different actors involved, theoretical definition of the teaching-learning process and process metrics.

The irruption in the technological scene of the Web 2.0 as a socio-technical phenom-enon, (Fumero, Roca y Sáez Vacas, 2007), has recovered old theoretical ambitions associated to some of these classical theories, especially those that have to do with the cognitive con-structivism of J. Piaget (1964) and the social constructivism of L. Vygotsky (1978).

These theories, enriched with daring bets like “connectivism” (Siemens, 2004), have led to the relaunching of pedagogical models such as self- managed or self-directed, with its singularities (Self -Managed vs. Self -Directed Learning) that have been complemented over



time with assisted intervention models, based on a process of “scaffolding”.

On the current stage – even when techno-logical excitement still prevails – both currents have joined, creating new uncertainties (i.e. opportunities) where solutions now in vogue are to be found; integrated Learning Manage-ment Systems (LMS); the first formulations of creative combinations of tools, methodologies and models, known as Personal Learning En-vironments (PLE), that have revitalized other technological or pedagogical concepts, such as e-Portfolios, or apprenticeship contracts.

A wide range of learning tools, that facilitate the management and monitoring of users and organization of courses as asserted by María Dolores Leris and Marisa Sein - Echauze (2011), allow us to deliver content to users in a personalized manner, i.e. they are endowed with the ability to adapt the content to the individual necessities of each student. The applications of the systems that have been shared here refer to adaptive learning. Systems that support it are often called Adaptive Learning Systems or Intelligent Tutoring Systems, their goal be-ing to incorporate the personal mentoring of classroom teaching to e-learning.

Infotechnological developments require us to continually modify our skills and intellectual abilities to adapt ourselves to the new technoso-cial environment. To do so, it is necessary “To provide individuals with the necessary intel-lectual tools to increase their communicative and critical skills and their ability to analyze, so that they can interpret, select, assess and even modify the information in the Red” (Rodriguez Sánchez, F. García and Hervas, JM, 2011).

By this we mean that it is not that important to master the “theoretical” lever; constructivism, connectivism, or even the potential instrumental use that we might be able to deploy in education (whether institutionalized by means of LMS and SFA systems or meta-tools for dynamic composition of personal learning environ-ments). What is important is to understand that the infotechnologies “Two-point-zero” which still dazzle us are already part of the “circum-

stances” (Ortega y Gasset, 1914) of those who want to learn, and that is the reason why their integration and understanding by educators and organizations through which socio-economic activity is articulated is so necessary.

The necessary interdisciplinarity that many a time has been insisted upon in educational processes backed by infotechnologies, but that in reality is rarely practiced, and, sometimes avoided by teachers / professors and technolo-gists, was made a reality in this case.

The need for a true interdisciplinarity has been many a time highlighted in educational processes backed by infotechnologies, although, in reality, it is rarely practiced, and sometimes even avoided by professors. In our case, it was made a reality.

The studens, the third group, compose the cast that constitutes the educational process. Their input is the fluid that allows us to under-stand, relativize and systematize a process that creates learning by working. In an interrelated manner, the foundation of knowledge is perma-nently nourished by the practical experience of the learners resolving given problems and the necessary skills applied in their professional work.

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