Montpellier Business School is located on a lovely wooded 6-acre campus in northeast Montpellier, about five kilometers (three miles) from the city center and 20 minutes from the beach. Located at the intersection of a recently built network of roads, the school has two entrances and is easily accessible. It also benefits from a unified public transportation network, which reaches the campus in 15 minutes from the Saint Roch SNCF train station.
The 14,000 m² (150.69 ft²) of surface area are distributed between seven buildings of various sizes. The parking area has 400 spots for vehicles and a zone reserved for “two-wheelers.” Six parking spaces are reserved for persons with reduced mobility (PRM). The entire campus is open Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday. There is an integrated security system in place, incorporating security guards and a video surveillance device.
Learning spaces and teaching methods
Classrooms
Out of the 2,500 students in all Montpellier Business School programmes, only 1,825 are actually present at any one time on the Montpellier campus. This is due to the instructional design of the Montpellier Business School Master Grande École programme and the Bachelor of International Business Administration programme, both of which require all students to spend one year in a company and most students to spend one academic year abroad. To accommodate these 1,825 students - including international students participating in academic exchanges - who are on campus from September to June, the institution has:
• 52 classrooms with a capacity of 12 to 75 students,
• a large amphitheater with 470 seats (including 11 reserved for PRM),
• an amphitheater with 134 seats,
• a “flat” amphitheater with 79 seats (including 4 reserved for PRM).
• various spaces available to students for group work.
This group of spaces has a total capacity of 2,912 seats.
A/V equipment
- All rooms are equipped with fixed audiovisual materials, which make it easier to manage the rooms and optimize occupancy. The following “mobile” materials round out this equipment: overhead projectors, video projectors, televisions, DVD players, projection screens and sound systems.
The school has a “Multimedia” room, which has the following three uses:
- shooting in studio mode for courses recorded in two streams: the video stream of the teacher or speaker and the course material video stream (e.g. PowerPoint). Other streams can be added and mixed in, such as a second fixed camera, a moving camera, DVD, etc.
- as a distance learning “campus-based” classroom: speakers are filmed in a professional setting and their courses are delivered via the “Adobe Connect” web conferencing tool.
- recording presentations that can be broadcast live on the internal digital signage network or using an external streaming server directly on the website.
- The school has a digital signage system including 11 screens distributed throughout buildings for providing information about campus life (associations, conferences, news broadcasts, etc.) in addition to real-time information concerning class schedules.
IT equipment
The IT equipment for educational purposes takes into account the need for each student to have a laptop computer. Three computer labs are open for self-service use.
The fixed workstations are equipped with standard office software and provide access to the library online, to databases and to secure printing.
Multifunction copiers with password-protected secure printing, which students initiate from their fixed stations or laptops via the wireless network.
Computer labs are managed by the Department of Information Systems, which provides continuous technical support to students.
The network
The campus is entirely covered by a wireless network, allowing students to be “wireless nomads” with their laptops and tablets. There are more than fifty WiFi hotspots on the campus making it possible to access programmes and digital resources via wireless connections.
The Internet and e-learning platforms
Due to the nature of the school’s degree programmes - involving a year abroad, a year in a company and one to two years on campus - ICT is at the heart of the teaching and learning process.
- The Internet: all microcomputers are connected to the Internet. Each student has unlimited use of the Internet and is provided with a personalized and secure e-mail address and more than 6 GB of individual storage space.
- The e-learning architecture: The institution has implemented an e-learning system to enhance the process of knowledge acquisition and of student support and guidance throughout the degree programme.
Document Center
Open Monday through Friday from 8:15 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., the Electronic Document Center gives users access to 5,500 recent books and 180 French and foreign journals (daily, weekly, monthly, specialized and scientific) as well as to DVDs. This collection covers all of the management disciplines taught at the school with a focus on the Group’s research areas.
Students, the entire faculty and the administrative staff benefit from individualized access to digital resources (Abi/Inform, Ebsco, Emerald, Inderscience, Sage, Science Direct, Wiley, etc.). These compile several tens of thousands of full-text resources, most of which are written in English. This information rounds out the selection available in paper format.
In all, the Electronic Document Center provides on and off campus access to 16 specialized digital resources providing up-to-date, verified and professional information. (Business and Markets, News, History, Law, Research, etc.)
Furthermore, Montpellier Business School provides students with personal codes giving them access to custom electronic textbooks made by the Pearson publishing company. These e-textbooks contain the required readings for each class, which students can access online or download. Lastly, teachers and students have access to the Electronic Document Center through the Center’s website, which is primarily focused on collections and services (searching for books and periodicals, placing holds, learning about new items, remotely accessing resources, etc.).
Finally, and with the support of the Electronic Document Center staff, students have six self-service computer workstations and a workspace at their disposal dedicated to document searches and to learning about and using digital information resources.
