哈佛商学院试水在线教育

    哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)终于迈出了进军数字教育领域的第一步。这所著名的商学院上周五宣布，准备面向文科专业本科生和应届毕业生推出一个收费1,500美元、包含3门基础商业课程的在线项目。哈佛方面预期将有500至1000名学生报名参加这个项目的测试版。定于今年6月份启动的测试版主要面向大三、大四学生和刚刚走出校园、居住在马萨诸塞州的毕业生开放。

    如果一切顺利，哈佛将于今年秋天在全美范围内提供这个名为“准备就绪凭证”(Credential of Readiness，简称CORe )的项目，届时招收的学生预计多达2000名，同时有望在明年扩大到国际学生。参加这个MBA预备项目的学生将在线学习三门课程：商业分析、管理经济学和财务会计。授课老师都是任教于哈佛商学院MBA项目的全职、终身和特聘教授。

    CORe是哈佛商学院势必将推出的一系列在线课程和项目的第一个。这所商学院一直在学院内部悄无声息地组建一个被冠以哈佛商学院之名的在线学习研发团队，这支团队目前已有32名全职员工。选择采用收费方式进入数字化教育领域这个事实说明，哈佛商学院终于决定加入方兴未艾的大规模在线开放课程(下文简称MOOC课程)——许多竞争对手正在向几十万在线用户免费提供核心及选修课程。

    这所商学院将于今年春末推出一系列课程，执教者皆是该校的招牌教授，比如战略大师迈克尔•波特【即“破坏先生”(Mr. Disruption)本人】、克雷•克里斯坦森，以及顶级创业学教授比尔•萨尔曼和乔•拉斯特。他们将分别讲授竞争力微观经济学；破坏性创新、增长和战略；创业和创新。克里斯坦森的课程需要每周学习4到5个小时，为期4周，而创业学课程最初将仅限于哈佛的本科生、研究生、博士后和研究员。

    过去几年来，许多商学院一直在尝试MOOC课程，声称投资这些课程是为了给他们提供一个探索商业模式的学习机会。去年1月份，弗吉尼亚大学(University of Virginia)推出了它第一个MOOC课程，主题是如何助推初创企业发展壮大。9月份，沃顿(Wharton)成为第一所把一系列MOOC课程捆绑在一起，用以传授MBA项目大部分核心必修课的商学院。斯坦福大学商学院(Stanford's Graduate School of Business) 去年10月份推出一个关于退休和养老金理财的MOOC课程。

    在线学位项目也在迅速激增。尽管早在1999年，印第安纳大学( Indiana University)凯利商学院(Kelley School of Business)就开始提供在线MBA学位，但卡耐基梅隆大学(Carnegie Mellon)泰珀商学院(Tepper School )和北卡罗莱纳大学(University of North Carolina)凯南-弗拉格勒商学院(Kenan-Flagler Business School)这些新加入这个行列的学校进一步增加了获得一个在线MBA学位这种想法的公信力。超过2,000名学生已经获得了凯利商学院颁发的在线MBA学位，它的在线项目“凯利直通车”(Kelley Direct)目前拥有728名在册学生。

    哈佛商学院此前一直持观望态度，不愿意蚕食或贬低现有的在校MBA和高管培训项目。但大约15个月前，一小群教师和管理人员开始不事张扬地讨论哈佛商学院应该如何应对这波数字教育浪潮。

    Harvard Business School on Friday made its first move into the digital educational realm with a $1,500 online program of three fundamental business courses for undergraduates and recent graduates of liberal arts programs. The school expects 500 to 1,000 students to enroll in the beta version of the program, which will launch this June for rising juniors and seniors and freshly minted college graduates who live in Massachusetts.

    If all goes well, Harvard expects to make the CORe (Credential of Readiness) program available nationwide in the fall, with as many as 2,000 students, and to roll it out internationally early next year. Students who enroll in the pre-MBA program will take a trio of online classes -- business analytics, economics for managers, and financial accounting -- all taught by full-time, tenured, and endowed professors at Harvard Business School who have taught in the MBA program.

    CORe is the first of what will inevitably be a portfolio of online courses and programs from the Harvard Business School, which has been quietly assembling an in-house online learning group dubbed HBS that now numbers 32 full-time staffers. In choosing to enter the digital education space with a paid offering, HBS has decided to pass on the MOOC bandwagon in which rival schools are providing both core and elective courses to hundreds of thousands of users for free.

    The school will launch a set of classes in late spring 2014 taught by the school's big guns: strategy guru Michael Porter, Mr. Disruption himself; Clay Christensen; and HBS' top professors in entrepreneurship, Bill Sahlman and Joe Lassiter. They will respectively teach the microeconomics of competitiveness; disruptive innovation, growth, and strategy; and entrepreneurship and innovation. Christensen's course will require four to five hours per week over four weeks, while the entrepreneurship course will initially be limited to Harvard undergrads, graduate students, and postdoctoral and clinical fellows.

    In the past couple of years, many business schools have been experimenting with massive open online courses, justifying their investments as a learning opportunity in search of a business model. In January of last year, the University of Virginia launched its first MOOC on growing an entrepreneurial business. In September, Wharton became the first business school to bundle a collection of MOOCs together to deliver much of its core required classes in the MBA program. Stanford's Graduate School of Business weighed in last October with a MOOC on the finance of retirement and pensions.

    Online degree programs have also proliferated. Though Indiana University's Kelley School of Business has been offering an online MBA since 1999, newer entrants such as Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School and the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina have brought additional credibility to the notion of getting an online MBA. More than 2,000 students have earned Kelley MBAs online, and the school's Kelley Direct online program currently has an enrollment of 728 students.

    Until now, Harvard Business School has been on the sidelines, not wanting to either cannibalize or cheapen its existing on-campus MBA program or its executive education offerings. But a small group of faculty and administrators quietly began informal discussions on what HBS should do with digital education some 15 months ago.