CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN CLASSROOM AND REALITY THROUGH VIRTUAL BRIDGES

Online guest lectures serve as an important learning activity for students to bridge the gap between the classroom and the reality of business and has become common during the Covid-19 pandemic. Such lectures enable students to better link theories and concepts to practice and can provide valuable network opportunities for students by facilitating contact with professionals in their field of studies. Online guest lecturing has also proven to have benefits for the course administration such as an easier allocation of guest lecturers and a more effective use of resources. This paper is part of a pre-study for determining the opportunities and challenges that online guest lecturing can have for students of engineering and management programs at a master level. Specifically, the purpose of the pre-study is to explore how online guest lectures are perceived among students and course directors, and how they can be improved. The method used involves a narrative literature review and an empirical pre-study. The results suggest that online guest lectures allow students to enhance their knowledge on the course contents and allow them to make more informed career choices. They also suggest that course directors use guest lectures as a means for inspiring and supporting the learning of the students. However, the results also suggest that students can adopt a more passive role in online guest lectures compared to face-to-face guest lectures. Learning in online guest lectures could be enhanced when connected to learning activities that support them, e.g., follow-up seminars, assignments, and reflection documents. In terms of implications, this study presents course directors and students’ perceptions of online guest lectures, as well as presents improvement suggestions for course directors and guest lecturers when planning and performing guest lectures in university courses to enhance learning among students.