COVID-19 Lockdown – The GISB Show Must Go On!

These are truly unique times.  I feel that I’m living in a movie or parallel Universe, sitting at home every day praying that the Pandemic which has killed so many people and paralyzed the entire world just disappears into thin air.  While I wait for this miracle to occur, my team and I have committed to delivering what we promised our students at the Global Institute of Sports Business (GISB), high quality, industry-designed sports management education and this is exactly what we have been able to accomplish over the past month.

We never prepared for a situation where we would not be able to access our state-of-the-art campus in Mumbai for an extended period of time and had to act fast as soon as it became clear that the Coronavirus was not going away any time soon. The first thing we did was begin compiling all of the best content that our students could consume during the lockdown period so that default habits of mindless television watching and random social media browsing wouldn’t set in.  This included TED talks, Books, Docuseries’, Articles, Knowledge Reports and footage of past sports conferences. This content didn’t just focus on sports management, it covered a wide range of self-development topics including How to Find your Purpose, Staying Grounded in Times of Chaos, Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset, Focus, etc… After that, we hopped on the phones and reached out to some of the top sports business experts in the world inviting them to commit to a date or dates to deliver lectures for our students online. 

The process was amazing. Within 48 hours, we had actually booked our calendar through the end of May just in case the lockdown was extended.  I felt tremendous gratitude towards the individuals who accepted our invitation as even though they were each going through their own process of dealing with this unexpected global crisis, they were more than happy to commit their time to educating our students. I believe that it is during challenging times when you see people’s true characters and this was definitely the case during those two days of continuous phone conversations.

With the schedule locked in, the next part was ensuring that our students were all in a place where they could comfortably access quality internet to attend the online classes. Aside from a few initial bandwidth challenges in Kolkata, all of the students shared that they were okay with daily online classes.  The real challenge for them, actually, was not getting access to quality internet, it was finding space and time to sit at a computer for a few hours in a home full of family members all expecting them to do domestic chores given the fact that most house help had been sent home.

The online sessions started strong with Sukhvinder Singh delivering two days of Sports Strategy courses and continued from there.  While we have had a leader within the global sports industry teach every day, here are a couple of notable names and organizations that come to mind:  Hicham El Amrani (former CAF General Secretary), Gaurav Sundararaman (ESPN CricInfo), Prashant Khanna (Star Sports) and Saorabh Sharma (Lagardere Sports). In addition to the daily online classes, my team and I are staying connected with the students through focused career coaching sessions, Live Project mentorship and guiding them with their personal projects (i.e. Blogs, Apps, etc.).

Here are a couple of things I’ve noticed while essentially running an online education program:

• Many of the students are more engaged as the online system allows them to completely focus on the presentation and conversation instead of losing attention due to common classroom distractions (people walking, bathroom breaks, chatting in class)

• The Zoom gallery view format makes it seem as everyone is equal versus teacher in the front at the podium and everyone else sitting so the students are more comfortable to ask questions

• My team and I are able to attend every session so we have a clear idea of what the students are learning and what topics interests which students

• The same protocols when we introduce and acknowledge Visiting Faculty at the GISB campus are being implemented online and they still work well

• While having a physical campus has a number of advantages, I’m definitely seeing the benefits of an online program especially when it comes to the significant reductions in infrastructure costs and travel time – worth exploring a hybrid online – offline program in the future where multi-week retreats are a core part of the course 

Overall, this has been and continues to be a tremendous learning experience. I’m proud of our entire team at GISB for stepping up and staying true to our commitment as educators of the next generation of global sports leaders.