HBX Intros HBX Live Virtual Classroom — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpt:

Harvard Business School‘s HBX digital learning initiative today launched a virtual classroom designed to reproduce the intimacy and synchronous interaction of the case method in a digital environment. With HBX Live, students from around the world can log in concurrently to participate in an interactive discussion in real time, guided by an HBS professor.

Built to mimic the amphitheater-style seating of an HBS classroom, the HBX Live Studio features a high-resolution video wall that can display up to 60 participants. Additional students can audit sessions via an observer model. An array of stationary and roaming cameras capture the action, allowing viewers to see both the professor and fellow students.

 

HBX Live

HBX Live’s virtual amphitheater
(PRNewsFoto/Harvard Business School)

 

Also see HBX Live in Action. 

I think that this type of setup could also be integrated with a face-to-face classroom as well (given the right facilities). The HBX Live concept fits right into a piece of my vision entitled, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.”

Several words/phrases comes to mind:

  • Convenience. I don’t have to travel to another city, state, country. That type of convenience and flexibility is the basis of why many learners take online-based courses in the first place.
  • Global — learning from people of different cultures, races, backgrounds, life experiences.
  • The opportunities are there to increase one‘s cultural awareness.
  • HBX Live is innovative; in fact, Harvard is upping it’s innovation game yet again — showing a firm grasp/display of understanding that they realize that the landscape of higher education is changing and that institutions of traditional higher education need to adapt.
  • Harvard is willing to experiment and to identify new ways to leverage technologies — taking advantage of the affordances that various technologies offer.

BTW, note how the use of teams is a requirement here.

 

HBXLive-8-26-2015

 

 

Also see:

Harvard Business School really has created the classroom of the future — from fortune.com by  John A. Byrne

Excerpt:

Anand, meantime, faces the images of 60 students portrayed on a curved screen in front of him, a high-resolution video wall composed of more than 6.2 million pixels that mimics the amphitheater-style seating of a class HBS tiered classroom