The internet has had a radical effect on the way business schools are able to disseminate learning. It allows them to deliver courses online and therefore to interact with students in far-flung locations. However, it has also opened the door for new entrants who can provide online teaching without the overhead of a campus.
互联网已经对商学院传播知识的方式产生了根本性的影响。通过网络，商学院可以在线教授课程，从而与距离遥远的学员进行互动。然而，网络也为一些新入行者提供了机会，它们可以提供在线教学，不用负担开办学院的费用。
These are early days, however. Online business education is a fledgling sector where no provider can claim to have created the perfect delivery model.
不过，现在只是开始。在线商业教育是一个刚刚兴起的行业，任何一家在线教育提供者都很难说自己创造了完美的授课模式。

After the rush to put free content online through massive open online courses (Moocs), a number of leading business schools have developed web-based programmes that blend online teaching with meetings on campus or virtual interactions that replicate the discussions that can take place in lecture halls. Many schools are also realising they need to charge for their content and teaching services.
在各方竞相通过大型网络公开课（Massive Open Online Courses，简称Mooc）形式将免费内容放到线上之后，一些知名商学院开发了基于网络的课程，将在线授课与校内上课或者复制那种讲座讨论的虚拟互动结合起来。许多商学院还意识到，它们有必要对内容和教学服务收费。
“The potential to reach new audiences and to integrate new ways of teaching means that online education is definitely here to stay,” says David Smith, who leads the education practice at the London office of Simon-Kucher & Partners the pricing and monetisation advisers. However, he adds that schools still need to find the right, sustainable business models.
“赢得新受众和整合新型授课方式的潜力意味着，在线教育必将持续下去，”定价和盈利咨询公司Simon-Kucher & Partners伦敦分部的教育业务主管戴维•史密斯(David Smith)说。不过他补充说，商学院还需要找到正确的、可持续的商业模式。
Some schools are trying to adapt their traditional teaching methods and put them online. Others are looking to reinvent the market. Mooc providers such as Coursera and edX have broken new ground. They have created purely online models, where content is free and revenue is generated by users paying for things such as accreditation certificates.
一些商学院正试图改变他们的传统授课方法，并将调整后的课程放到网上。其他一些商学院则试图重塑市场。Coursera和edX等提供Mooc的机构已经走出了一条新路。它们创建了一种纯粹的网络教学模式，内容免费，靠用户申请认证证书等进项来赚取收入。
Some schools have made courses available on the big Mooc platforms. Others have created their own platforms to deliver versions of courses online, in part to counter the threat from entrants from Silicon Valley.
一些商学院将课程放在大型Mooc平台上。其他一些商学院则开发了自己的平台，提供不同版本的在线课程，部分目的是为了对抗来自硅谷的新入行者带来的威胁。
What is emerging is a set of business-school run courses that blend online and offline teaching. These are based on the principle that online learning is not a passive activity, but a chance to interact with professors and other students through web conferencing.
由商学院提供的一类新课程正在崭露头角，这些课程将线上和线下授课结合起来，并基于如下原则：在线学习并不是一种被动的活动，而是一个通过网络会议，与教授和其他学员互动的机会。
An example is Harvard Business School’s digital learning platform HBX. This provides online tuition, but marks a break with Mooc platforms in that it involves a selective admissions process and a tuition requirement for enrollees.
哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的电子学习平台HBX就是一例。该平台虽然提供在线授课，但由于是选择性招生，并向录取者收取学费，因此与Mooc平台有所不同。
The first HBX course programme, called Credential of Readiness (Core), consists of three courses on business analytics, accounting and management economics, and is taught by HBS faculty.
HBX平台上的第一个课程项目名为“Core”（Credential of Readiness ，意为“准备就绪证书”），包括商业分析、会计和管理经济学三门课，由哈佛商学院的老师授课。
A pilot, started last summer, was limited to Massachusetts-based undergraduates, who could be physically and virtually monitored, but applications are now invited from around the world for 600 places on a 10-week, $1,500 course.
该课程的试运行从去年夏天开始，当时仅限马萨诸塞州的本科生报名，学员可能要接受线上和线下的指导。现在，这个为期10周、收费1500美元的课程向全世界600个地方的人开放申请。
“We went through a conscious effort not to go down the Mooc route,” explains Bharat Anand, professor of business administration and faculty chairman of HBX.
“我们有意识地不重复Mooc课程的老路，”HBX学院主席、商业管理教授巴拉特•阿南德(Bharat Anand)解释道。
“We wanted it to be more than just watching a video for 25 minutes. HBX is about interacting, asking others questions and getting involved online.”
“我们希望它不仅仅是看25分钟的视频。HBX的重点在于互动、向他人提问以及在线参与。”
The pilot confirmed that Core was financially viable and showed the HBX structure succeeding where Moocs have failed in terms of student engagement. About 90 per cent of students who started the pilot completed the course, Professor Anand notes, similar to results for Harvard campus courses.
这个试运行项目证实，Core课程项目在经济上是可行的，同时也表明HBX克服了Mooc失败的一个问题：在学率。参与该项目的90%的学生学完了课程，阿南德教授表示，这与哈佛商学院校园课程的完成度差不多。
“In a Mooc world, it [student retention] is single digits,” he adds. “If you get to 10 per cent, you are typically cheering.”
“在Mooc的世界里，（在学率）是个位数的，”他补充道，“如果到了10%，你通常就会谢天谢地了。”
The problem with Moocs, Prof Anand says, is that they did not play to any of Harvard’s strengths as a leading business school, whose value is based on the quality of its teaching and the dynamic it creates in the classroom when case studies are being taught.
阿南德教授表示，Mooc的问题在于，它们不具备哈佛商学院作为一所顶尖商学院所具有的任何一项优势。哈佛商学院的价值建立在其教学质量、以及讲授案例研究时在课堂上营造的那种活力的基础之上。
“The case study method of teaching [at Harvard] is high energy. Everybody is involved, so there is no distinction between the teacher and the student.”
“（哈佛的）案例研究教学法很有活力。每个人都参与其中，因此教师和学生之间并没有差别。”
Applicants for the upcoming Core course are already from a much wider demographic than traditional campus courses, ranging from undergraduates — who HBS aims to get “business ready” — to people in their 40s and 50s.
本次即将开课的Core课程的申请人数已经远远超过了传统的校园课程，申请人从本科生——哈佛商学院的目标是让他们“准备好投身商界”——到四五十岁的人。
“With people who are older, we are seeing different motivations,” says Prof Anand. “People who are career switchers, but don’t think they have the skills; a second group of entrepreneurs or people who want to be entrepreneurs; and a third group of people coming from academic and not-for-profit backgrounds.”
“对于那些年纪较长的人，我们看到了不同的动机，”阿南德教授说，“有的人想要改换职业，但又认为自己不具备相应技能；第二种是创业家或者想成为创业家的人；第三种是来自学术界和具有非盈利性背景的人。”
The future, according to the professor, will be “multiplatform”, both virtual and face-to-face. “In some ways, the physical classroom will always be better,” says Prof Anand, but adds: “There are things you can only do in the online world.”
这位教授表示，未来将是“多平台”的，包括虚拟课堂和面对面授课。“就某些方面来说，现实中的课堂始终要更好一些，”阿南德教授说，但他又补充道，“也有一些事情你只能在线做。”
Over in California, Stanford Graduate School of Business has launched an online business education course, called the Lead (learn, engage, accelerate and disrupt) certificate education programme for company executives. At $16,000, Lead is considerably more expensive than Harvard’s online offering. “I don’t think anything that anyone is doing at the moment is definitive on the direction that the industry should go,” says Dave Weinstein, associate dean and director of executive education at Stanford.
在加利福尼亚州，斯坦福大学商学院(Stanford Graduate School of Business)推出了一门名为“Lead”（Learn、engage、accelerate和disrupt的首字母缩写）的高管认证教育课程。Lead项目的收费为1.6万美元，比哈佛的在线课程收费高得多。“我不认为现在每个人做的事情都必定符合这个行业的发展方向，”斯坦福大学商学院副院长兼高管教育总监戴夫•温斯坦(Dave Weinstein)说。
“One of the critical challenges of Lead is how we get people to come together so that they walk away perceiving that there is a relationship formed at the same place and at the same time.”
“Lead面临的关键挑战之一是，我们如何让人们凝聚在一起，这样当他们离开的时候，他们会感到在同一时间同一地点建立了一种关系。”
Mr Weinstein believes business education needs to be more flexible — large companies, which used to fund their executives on MBA programmes, are less willing to allow senior executives to spend long periods away studying and time-poor start-up founders are similarly unlikely to be able to take time out for an MBA.
温斯坦相信，商业教育有必要变得更加灵活——曾出资让高管去攻读MBA的大公司现在不太愿意让高管长时间离职学习，同样，分身乏术的初创企业创始人也不大可能专门辟出时间攻读MBA。
“We believe it is incumbent upon us to deliver education to people who don’t have the luxury to go to a campus,” says Mr Weinstein.
“我们认为，我们有责任向那些没有条件专门到学校学习的人提供教学服务，”温斯坦说。
Stanford’s proximity to the world’s largest collection of technology companies is an advantage, he adds.
他补充道，斯坦福毗邻全球最大的科技公司群，这是一项优势。
“The world of online is the world of Silicon Valley, where you experiment and fail fast. It is in our DNA.”
“一说线上世界就是硅谷，在这里，你试验和失败的速度都很快。这深植于我们的DNA之中。”
The experimentation in online business education is set to continue. But the only certainty so far is that no one has yet proven theirs to be the definitive business model for teaching.
对在线商业教育的试验还将继续下去。但目前为止唯一能确定的是，还没有人能证明他们的授课模式是终极的商业教育模式。