The Harvard Business School online program provides a good example of direct borrowing of a campus-based pedagogy for online delivery, and a recent change in branding seems to have confirmed that fidelity to the campus programs of the business school is attractive to students. When the Harvard Business School changed the name of its online program from HBX to Harvard Business School Online there was a substantial increase in both web traffic and enrollment.
The online program is designed to replicate the on campus experience as faithfully as possible. The platform developed for the program allows live class sessions in which all 60 student participants are displayed on individual screens viewable to the instructor and to one another. This supports class sessions using the same case study method employed on campus.
This success story shows that borrowing forms and approaches developed for face to face experiences on campus can be attractive to students at a distance. The alternative would be to develop an entirely new approach, an approach that might only be possible online and one that takes advantage of that environment. It remains to be seen which of these paths will dominate as online learning develops over a longer period of time.
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