BOSTON \u2014 The newest classroom at\u00a0Harvard’s\u00a0business school has no desks or chairs. Instead, the professor teaches facing a towering digital screen that stretches from wall to wall, filled with the live video feeds of up to 60 students tuned in from their computers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the futuristic classroom, housed in a television studio two miles from campus, class plays out like a giant video conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Students can jump in to ask questions or respond to their classmates. The professor can stop a lecture to quiz individual students, or send the group a quick online poll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project, called HBX Live, is a departure from the genre of online courses that are recorded in advance to be taken later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here,\u00a0Harvard\u00a0sought to create a live, online replica of its campus classrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“With one difference, of course, which is we collapse geography,” said Bharat Anand, a business professor and faculty chairman of HBX, a digital initiative at the school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a recent test of the technology, alumni connected to the room from Thailand, New Zealand and the Philippines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“That’s something we’ve never, ever done before,” Anand said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This school year,\u00a0Harvard\u00a0will use HBX Live to teach its business students when they disperse on global study trips in January, and to host virtual research presentations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, the school will consider creating new online programs taught primarily through the room, Anand said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the technology isn’t widespread, experts said, some other schools have experimented with the concept of a live web-based classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Yale University’s business school, students around the world can take online courses taught through video conferences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The University of California San Diego created a computer program that puts students in a virtual world, like a video game, where they can take seminars and interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“People have been trying to do video conferencing in education for a long time, going back to the ’80s,” said Frank Vahid, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Riverside, and co-founder of the online education company zyBooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Technology improvements have boosted that pursuit in recent years, Vahid said, both in the classroom and in the business world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Certainly in the corporate world, the quality of web conferencing has become very advanced,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the idea isn’t entirely new,\u00a0Harvard\u00a0put a twist on it by approaching the project like a live television production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To learn the trade, school officials visited NBC Sports studios in Connecticut and studied reality TV shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The school hired a production crew that sits in a control room above the studio, broadcasting the class to students with the cinematic polish of a cable news show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crew members toggle between dozens of cameras trained at the professor, lingering only a few seconds on each angle. One worker roams around the professor with a hand-held camera, aiming to give students a sense of movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We’re trying to create a constant energy as well as feed off what the professor says,” said Peter Shaffery, who was hired to be the technical director of the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harvard\u00a0hasn’t disclosed how much it spent on the classroom and its crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leaders of the business school said HBX Live is a big step as the school dives into online education, but stressed that it’s just one of several offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s really cool in isolation, but really the way to think about it is in context with other initiatives that we’re pushing,” said Youngme Moon, a senior associate dean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The school also recently unveiled an online program on business basics, along with other courses geared toward executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harvard\u00a0plans to hold about 100 sessions in the TV studio over the next year, hoping that professors will find new uses for it, too, Anand said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s almost like we’re building an infrastructure,” he said, “and now we’ve just got to let the imagination run.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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