Harvard Business School

Transcript

The electronic course platform is a wonderful way about how our environment has changed.  It means that I can wait much later before I have to basically get a case released.  I'm teaching a new case this afternoon.  I was unable to get that released until Monday morning.  By Monday afternoon,  the thing was simply all the references had been checked.  The thing was popped on the platform.  A third of my students are resident off the campus on the platform.  Anybody in the—registered in the course immediately able to download it that I don't bother to carry slides into the class.  That after the class is over they're simply there on the course platform.  I'm able to provide hot links to students on relevant sites,  so that they can quickly go out and sort of look at supporting material.

This case I'm teaching this afternoon,  which is brand new,  I won't have to worry about this,  but I will when I teach it next year is Google.  That my best students almost immediately after they've looked at the case,  go out to Google to see what has happened since which they can bring into the class.  And so I simply have to sort of adapt that the latest of that information is in the classroom,  and I've opted to simply use that as—or reward students for doing that.  And the notion,  as opposed to saying,   "Why are you bringing extraneous stuff in?"   But it's the speed of stuff,  the ability to bring new sources.

The case I was teaching yesterday,  I wonder how many employees were working for the company.  It was a Chinese bank.   Simply Google:   China Merchant's Bank employees.  Bing.  Up comes an article.  Four months ago,  22,600 employees.  So you can just simply marshal data access and sites,  but all to support the general management teaching process.  Because you wouldn't see a lot of difference in what goes on in my classroom today than 1967,  except that the professor has a lot more gray hair,  and is not as timid as he used to be about cold calls.

But the basic educational process inside the room,  with a professor challenging students around complex issues,  where there are not clear answers,  but a lot of ambiguity,  that, and learning how to deal with it.  And that's the core of the School that I entered in the fall of 1959.  And that's really the core of what's going on in 2008.  And the technology has enhanced that in a culturally acceptable way.  If we didn't have that,  in an environment filled with YouTube, and so forth, we would be seen as just quaint, and archaic.  So all of this money has been painfully spent, but it basically has kind of kept us,  you know,  up to speed with a changing world,  and allowed us to focus on those things which we do best.