Harvard Business School (HBS) today announced HBX, its venture into online
learning. It differs in two
significant ways from edX, the Harvard-MIT
online learning partnership through which HarvardX has offered massive open
online courses (MOOCs) from diverse schools for free to a worldwide
audience:
HBX uses proprietary technology, not the edX platform.
HBX is pioneering fee-based courses, which hold the promise
of significant new revenue streams.
The new HBS-originated business offerings debut with three
elements:
CORe (the acronym for Credential of Readiness), a two-month suite of
three fundamental courses aimed at a new audience—college liberal-arts
students, non-business graduate students pursuing other professions (law, say,
or engineering), and people early in their careers— for whom familiarity with
basic business concepts may prove helpful in their work or subsequent career decisions.
Specialized executive courses, beginning with offerings on
subjects such as entrepreneurship and innovation; disruptive innovation, growth
and strategy; and the microeconomics of competitiveness.
HBX Live, a virtual classroom, built in partnership with
public broadcaster WGBH, that enables direct, real-time interaction among 60
participants dispersed worldwide and with a faculty member, as if they were all
located within a campus classroom; anticipated early users include HBS alumni
and executive-education matriculants.
In the news announcement, HBS dean
Nitin Nohria said, “HBX embodies the
highly engaged, interactive learning that has been a hallmark of the school’s
M.B.A., doctoral, and executive education programs for more than a
century. Moreover, HBX will
provide a powerful channel for communicating ideas to and engaging with new and
wider audiences, complementing the work we do through Harvard Business
Publishing.”
That statement explains
two elements of HBX.
First, HBS determined to
create its own online platform in order to emulate its case-based, interactive
classroom experience. The CORe offerings, for example, according to a March 20
communication from Nohria to the HBS community, are informed by careful thought
about “how we can create an online
counterpart to the signature on-campus HBS experience, including how students
might be cold-called or benefit from the diversity and experiences of other
students.” (The cold-calling will apparently be effected by pop-up prompts requirng a rapid response from online learners.)
Second, rather than simply
using that technology to translate existing classes to an online format, HBS is aiming,
in its initial offerings at least, to reach entirely new audiences: in Nohria’s
words, “segments of the population we’ve never directly addressed before.”
Those include CORe’s target market—the undergraduates and graduate students in
other fields or employees early in their careers who might progress faster with
basic business education.
Interestingly, they also
include those executives in the second category, above, who may not be enrolled in campus-based executive education,
but to whom marquee faculty members like Clayton M.
Christensen, Clark professor of business administration, who is known for
exploring disruptive innovation, and Lawrence
University Professor Michael E. Porter, the scholar of corporate strategy
and leader of the school’s U.S.
competitiveness project, could be even more broadly appealing, promoting
follow-on engagement with HBS. Innovation and entrepreneurship faculty leaders Joseph B.
Lassiter, Heinz professor of management practice in environmental management,
and William
A. Sahlman, D’Arbeloff-M.B.A. Class of
1955 professor of business administration, might also be in the early lineup.
Finally, HBX Live,
available on an invitation-only basis, provides an avenue for lifelong learning
for the school’s alumni, who by some reports are less likely than non-alumni to enroll in
executive-education courses. It also offers new opportunities to teach
executive-education classes around the world. (Some of these are already taught in
HBS facilities in Mumbai and Shanghai, on company premises in other countries,
or in serial segments internationally and on the campus in Allston.)
Thus, HBS represents a fourth arrow in HBS’s educational quiver, joining the campus-based M.B.A. and doctoral programs; executive education; and Harvard Business School Publishing (which operates Harvard Business Review, disseminates teaching cases, and releases books—and which is HBS’s largest business by revenue, with income of $180 million in the fiscal year ended last June).
Founding Principles
According to Nohria’s
community message, planning for HBX began in mid 2012, shortly after the
announcement of edX. The work was guided by several principles:
HBX
must expand the reach of Harvard Business School and our mission of educating
leaders who make a difference in the world. We must think strategically
about well-defined student segments where we see potential for significant
impact.
HBX
must provide faculty with a powerful platform for disseminating their ideas
globally.
HBX
must complement and enhance our on-campus offerings. Our residential
programs are among the most treasured academic experiences in the world, and we
should not dilute the integrity of those experiences—rather, we should try
to strengthen them.
HBX
must elevate our reputation for excellence and impact. We must pick our
spots carefully, looking for places where we can create sustained, differentiated
value for individuals and organizations. Our commitment is to do no less
than transform.
HBX
offerings must be highly differentiated from existing alternatives. Our
challenge is to establish a standard for excellence in online business
education and pedagogy, just as we have established the standard for excellence
in our case method classrooms.
HBX must be
built on a robust and forward-looking economic model. While HBX should
make business education more accessible, including financially, it also must be
economically sustainable to enable future investment and growth.
That last point distinguishes HBX from HarvardX, which is funded, so far, by philanthropy and the deployment of University funds. (edX received infusions of capital from Harvard and MIT, and receives revenues from members schools and other users of its technology, but does not charge students who use its courses.)
The actual
planning was led by Byers professor
of business administration Bharat N. Anand, a member of HBS’s strategy
unit, who serves as faculty chair of HBX, and Jana Kierstead, former director
of career and professional development (HBS’s career-services organization) and
staff director of the M.B.A. program, who serves as HBX executive director.
Accordingly, Anand—who also serves on the HarvardX
faculty committee—oversaw development of the HBX platform from a teaching
perspective; Kierstead assembled a staff at 175 North Harvard Street, managing technology,
business operations, and personnel. (The investment appears to be substantial,
given the scope of the initial offerings, the virtual classroom facility at
WGBH’s studios, and a staff that by one account numbers more than 30 people.)
The Initial Program
CORe will launch in June, with an initial cohort of 500
to 1,000 students drawn principally from rising juniors and seniors in
Massachusetts colleges and universities; applications will be available on the
HBX website in April. The program consists of three courses: business
analytics, taught by Philips
professor of manufacturing Janice H. Hammond (see screenshot, above);
economics for managers, taught by Anand; and financial accounting, taught by Casserly
professor of business administration V. G. Narayanan. Business executives appear in videos during the courses, much as they make in-person appearances in HBS classrooms during case discussions.
HBS has some familiarity
with teaching this material in this way; entering M.B.A. students are expected
to have mastered it before beginning their first-year, required courses on
campus, and have been offered summer instruction (in person and in varying
online formats) in prior years. Testing the program relatively nearby will
allow the faculty to work out any problems in course delivery or student
engagement; but the plan is clearly to make the program widely available, to
the broad universe of students and new members of the workforce who could
benefit from basic business intelligence.
In CORe, HBS aims to reach
different learners entirely; to require their active participation in the class
(assessment will depend on both mastery of material and participation in the
course, as in an M.B.A. class on campus); and—both to defray costs and to
motivate engagement—to charge $1,500 for the course sequence (need-based
financial aid is available). The intent is to have students who enroll complete
the courses and “graduate.” In a sense, this is the inverse of the MOOC model,
where enrollment is free, but attrition is widespread: according to research on
the first year of HarvardX and MITX courses, about one-third of
registrants in the no-cost, no-obligation offerings never proceeded to sample any of the content, and so had no deeper
“engagement” with the course than completing the online registration itself.
The HBS-focused
executive courses, beginning in
late spring, are an experiment in broadening dissemination of faculty members’
idea and research to a wider audience. Initial subjects and likely faculty
members are listed above, but further offerings are promised. No announcement
was made about whether the program would be fee-based. Updated 9:00 a.m.: An FAQ on the HBX website indicates that the courses are meant to be offered to multiple members of an organization, with pricing details available on request to HBS.
HBX Live debuts in the summer—presumably reflecting not
only build-out of the studio and practicing with the technology before use, but
also a seasonally suitable time to engage participants, and to reach out to
alumni during the school’s capital campaign.
University Context
Although HBX and HarvardX
are communicating and have overlapping faculty committee members (Anant, plus Narayanan, who
serves on the HarvardX research committee)—and can be expected to share
best practices—the technology platforms, as noted, are distinct. HBS faculty
are using HarvardX to offer courses for general public consumption (as have professors from the Law School and the School of Public Health). HBX
offerings are all either fee-based or are designed for controlled enrollment aiming at
specific audiences.
There is no indication so
far that HBX has partnered with other professional schools, some of which now
offer case-based classes like HBS’s core M.B.A. methodology, and many of which
have executive-education operations.
In the news announcement,
Provost Alan Garber, who is a member of the HarvardX leadership group and
co-chair of the edX board, said:
We applaud the arrival of
HBX. This unique digital learning endeavor continues the Business School’s long
history of innovation and experimentation in management education, and is yet
another example of how Harvard is setting the standard for the twenty-first century. The lessons we learn
from HBX will be deeply interwoven with other efforts such as HarvardX and
edX, informing best practices in blended and online teaching and offering
world-class educational materials beyond our campus.
Read the news
announcement here. The Boston Globe report focuses on the CORe offering. Poets & Quants, an online blog focused on business education, covers HBX here; it forecasts national roll-out of CORe this fall, and international availability in 2015, and describes it as a “pre-M.B.A.” program; it also reports that HBS has “decided to pass on the MOOC bandwagon” of free course offerings.