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    • Educational Innovation
    • Countdown To Remote Learning
    • New Course Helps Students Craft Their Post-HBS Lives
    • New Virtual Classrooms Expand Digital Learning
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  • New Virtual Classrooms Expand Digital Learning→

Educational Innovation

Educational Innovation

  • Countdown To Remote Learning
  • New Course Helps Students Craft Their Post-HBS Lives
  • New Virtual Classrooms Expand Digital Learning

New Virtual Classrooms Expand Digital Learning

 
When HBS opened its first virtual classroom in 2014, the School had just started to experiment with online education. Located at Boston’s public television station about two miles from campus, the classroom was designed to deliver programming by then newly launched HBX (now called Harvard Business School Online).

Fast forward six years and online learning—and the need for it—has evolved significantly, leading the School to expand and move the operation onto campus. The original classroom has been replaced with two new larger classrooms—increasing flexibility and capacity from 60 participants to nearly 200.

“These HBS Live Online classrooms are designed to look and feel like our physical classrooms and to be congruent with our pedagogy,” explains Ron Chandler, chief information officer. “The richness of the classroom experience has everything to do with the level of interactivity between faculty and students, and these virtual classrooms provide a better online experience.”

96
Students can appear “on the wall” simultaneously
200+
Computers power the two classrooms
25
Miles of cable connect the equipment

Students log in from their respective computers all over the world and, through a custom interface, their faces appear on a curved video wall in the virtual classroom. The professor stands in front of the video wall—similar to the pit of an Aldrich physical classroom. The students and professor can easily see and speak with each other.

Off camera in the control room, production staff “direct the show,” says Dustin Hilt, director of HBS Live programming. “We’ve combined video conferencing software with television production hardware and techniques to create a much more interactive, engaging experience,” explains Hilt. “We control the technology, including multiple cameras, so the students can focus on the class.”

The new classrooms will be a School-wide resource—for Executive Education, MBA, doctoral, and HBS Online courses; alumni events and meetings; and other special programs.

“We’ve combined video conferencing software with television production hardware and techniques to create a much more interactive, engaging experience.”
Dustin Hilt
Director of HBS Live Programming

The pandemic drove the accelerated completion of the two classrooms to accommodate the June start of a new online version of Executive Education’s Program for Leadership Development. “Last spring, we had to cancel or postpone a number of upcoming programs,” notes Nancy DellaRocco, executive director of Executive Education. “We could not have reopened our doors virtually so quickly without the new classrooms. The timing was fortuitous.”

In recent years, Chandler explains, HBS has been experimenting with digital learning—to complement the flagship case method and field-based learning. “These virtual classrooms are an important step in refining and expanding this effort,” says Chandler.

More on educational innovation

Countdown to Remote Learning

When the pandemic hit, HBS had just two weeks to adapt its in-person teaching approach to provide an interactive and engaging experience online that thoughtfully incorporated the case method.

New Course Helps Students Craft Their Post-HBS Lives

A new course—created primarily by students and heavily influenced by alumni—aims to prepare students to better handle the choices, surprises, and tradeoffs that they will face after graduation.
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