Transformational Education > New technologies
Warren McFarlan on online exams
Transcript
The next experimental thing which I did—it must have been in my second year course in 1986-87—is, I conceived of the notion that they would be able to use the computer, bring a computer anywhere they want, and take their final exam, you know, twenty —anywhere they wanted to in a twenty-four hour period. They could dial in across the network. The exam would be downloaded. They would work on the exam, and then they would load it back up.
A number of my colleagues have indicated this notion of actually getting the computer in machine-readable form, typing it out, and preparing it was the absolute, utter destruction of the Harvard Business School as they knew it. And that, nonetheless, I persevered forward. And, of course, today 100 percent of the students basically receive their exams electronically, do the exam on the computer, and they are just simply 100 percent [...]
And that is the interesting thing. That Ed Learned, in some critical way, was able to see we were a school of general management. We would remain a school of general management, but that the information technology, in many ways, would suffuse itself right into the day to day operating habits. At the same time, he was also able to see that this was not just going to support marketing or production, but that it might absolutely transform completely how organizations are put together.