Innovative teaching practices: the extended academic enterprise as a new framework for action (interview with F. Chevalier, HEC Paris)
- Business Science Institute
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
As part of the publication of the book Pratiques pédagogiques innovantes – Construire la pédagogie de demain(Innovative Teaching Practices – Building the Pedagogy of Tomorrow), edited by Françoise Chevalier (HEC Paris) and Christophe Fournier (IAE Montpellier school of management, AUNEGE), several contributions explore the transformation of teaching practices in higher education. The concept of the extended academic enterprise, proposed by Françoise Chevalier, is one of the guiding principles. It refers to a profound restructuring of the ways in which knowledge is produced, disseminated, and legitimized, at the crossroads of the academic world, digital technology, and non-academic actors.
A restructuring of roles in the educational chain
The extended academic enterprise is based on the observation that teacher-researchers no longer develop their teaching methods alone, in an artisanal manner. The production of courses, particularly in digital form, now requires a wide range of skills from diverse backgrounds. Building a MOOC often requires a whole team, including specialists in scriptwriting, computer graphics, video recording, and broadcasting. These skills may be provided by internal departments, but also by external service providers or start-ups. This evolution is creating new chains of subcontracting, coordination, and orchestration within the institution itself.
This shift is accompanied by a gradual blurring of traditional boundaries: between institutions (schools, universities), between functions (teaching, technical, communication), but also between worlds (academic and economic). Teachers are thus becoming project managers, working at the interface of several professions, in a logic of expanded co-production. The model of the solitary craftsman is giving way to a pedagogical platform where resources, expertise, and content circulate.
An educational ecosystem beyond the classroom walls
This phenomenon is part of an environment where education is no longer limited to the academic sphere. Many external organizations—digital platforms (Coursera, TEDx, Khan Academy), companies (IBM, AXA), edtech start-ups—produce high-quality content, often available for free or under a white label. These new knowledge producers are helping to transform educational practices within institutions themselves, encouraging teachers to source, adapt, or recombine existing modules.
This movement is blurring the boundaries between content producers and distributors. It is also promoting hybrid forms of collaboration, in which higher education institutions are no longer the only legitimate places of learning. They become nodes in a larger network with variable geometries.
Pedagogy caught between massification and personalization
Finally, this dynamic is profoundly changing the relationship between time and space in learning. Teaching no longer takes place in a single setting over a long, linear period of time. It is becoming continuous, fragmented, and on demand. Learners access modular resources according to a just-in-time teaching approach, which allows content to be tailored to individual needs. This form of mass customization, made possible by digital technologies and artificial intelligence, is redefining learning pathways and disrupting traditional formats of knowledge transfer.
The book highlights the emergence of a new educational ecosystem, characterized by a diversity of actors, fragmented teaching sequences, and the gradual integration of collaborative production methods. It calls for a rethinking of academic strategies in light of these changes, from an open and collaborative perspective.