Business education in an instant world

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: class at the University of Virginia and challenge a student in New York mid-sentence or support the statements of a colleague in Shanghai in real time? Far from being theoretical arguments, these questions are practical realities that have been shaping the world of business education for at least a decade. While most every college and university has adapted in some form, mastering the use of technology to deliver a more valued and valuable MBA education in the classroom has been hard.

For business schools it is important to understand how technology alters the value of what schools deliver to students. One key effect has been to make near-commodities out of individual lectures. With the ease of digital recording and the delivery of classroom simulations and documents, the one-way dialogue from professor to students can and will increasingly be made free and universally available. And, why not? Once polished and expertly delivered, a lecture’s value is largely captured. The incremental value of having a professor repeat the exercise time and time again is relatively low, particularly if engagement with students and their questions is minimal, as it is in many instances. Moreover, a valuable lecture, or series of lectures, delivered by a master can educate far more students than those who can enter any particular classroom. The former may spread valuable knowledge to teeming masses across the world, whose means would never allow such a privilege. Like the technologies that liberally deliver the world’s great written works for free, digital lectures will reshape the way we think about what business schools deliver.

For the plainest example of how digital lectures will change the value of what schools deliver, look no further than Stanford University’s Engineering school and their SEE (Stanford Education Everywhere) Program (http://see.stanford. edu). In just a few clicks and for no cost at all, you can watch lectures, read class notes and even give yourself exams straight from a top-notch university’s professors. Similar projects can been seen through MIT’s Courseware programme and Apple U, but no similarly broad business school project has yet surfaced. Rest assured it will and with it will come the questions about what it all means for the value of such teaching, such teaching methods and for the students and schools.