Without much fanfare, the Harvard Business School has started to develop a new online initiative, the first step into online learning for one of the nation’s most prestigious business schools.
The move puts Harvard into the area of MOOCs, or massive open online courses. The move may “shake up” the online education market, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. It’s also a bold move for Harvard Business School, which is one of the best-known brands in all of education.
“This is a lot bigger than meets the eye,” John Fernandes , the chief executive of the business school accreditation group Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business , told BusinessWeek. “They’re going to get high visibility with students all over the world. I don’t want to say it’s going to displace face-to-face education, but it’s going to be a big piece of the pie.”
Fernandes called the decision by Harvard Business School a “watershed” moment for the school and for online education as a whole.
Harvard Business School will now offer online courses for its Master of Business Administration and executive education programs.
The online effort, called HBX, is headed by Jana Kierstead, a graduate of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and Cornell University, according to her Linked In profile. On her profile, Kierstead says that HBX “aims to establish a standard of excellence in online business education by creating sustained, differentiated value for individuals who and organizations that make a difference in the world.”
The goal is “to become the premier provider of high quality online business education,” according to the profile for Kierstead, who is the executive director of the Harvard Business School MBA program and formerly the director of MBA Career Services at Harvard Business School.
Harvard is already involved with MOOC provider edX. The school partners in the venture with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Texas. The new business courses will likely be offered through edX, Brain Kenny, the chief marketing officer for Harvard Business School, told BusinessWeek. Currently there are no business courses among the 17 offered by Harvard.
BusinessWeek reported that Kenny declined to talk specifics about the course, saying instead that the project was still in too early a phase to discuss details. The business school is already advertising for applicants to jobs as a product manager and a director of academic content development who will oversee the creation of all content for the online courses.
It’s unknown whether students will be able to earn a certificate, such as that offered by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business classes on MOOC provider Coursera. Students in those courses can earn a “verified certificate” that shows they have completed the course and have a grasp of the content.
Wharton, according to BusinessWeek, recently has pushed forward with creating its online business education courses. Wharton now has its entire first-year MBA curriculum available for free online, according to BusinessWeek.
Please Leave A Comment
Related posts:
Harvard Business School Gets $10 Million to Support MBA Program
Harvard Business School Goes Online to Teach Non-Business Students about Business
Wharton Offers First-Year MBA Courses Online Through Coursera
Harvard Business School Offers Talent Management Course for Executives
Harvard Business School Studies Beyoncé