Experiential eLearning

H20 Free Online Classroom Tools from Harvard’s Berkman Center

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is an “entrepreneurial nonprofit” whose mission is to “explore and understand cyberspace; to study its development, dynamics, norms, and standards; and to assess the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions.”  Basically, they study the relationship between the Internet, law, and society through a number of fascinating initiatives, many of which involve some of the celebrated intellectuals and authors in fellowship at the center.  Some of these initiatives involve tools that better enable educators to utilize, and be supported by, online and technology-based platforms.  We invited Kendra Albert, research assistant at the Berkman Center and assistant to noted Berkman steward and Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain, to visit with us at Harvard Business Publishing and give an overview of some of the free tools and platforms they’ve developed for education.

The Case for Custom Business Simulations

At Harvard Business School's Publishing group we've been a longtime fan of custom business simulations, and took thet custom development approach when we designed the platform and portfolio of our own business simulation games.  It's nice to see that the idea of creating custom simulations has only gained prominence in both academic and corporate settings.  BTS, a creator of experiential learning solutions for strategy implementation including custom business simulations, recently released a whitepaper called "Navigating Strategy Execution: The Case for Custom Business Simulations" (see their whitepaper page to download).  It's a great overview of the benefits that custom simulations can provide in corporate environments but also includes some great universal truths about the impact of this type of approach on learning.  We're heard great things about BTS and their approach and a few years back I had interviewed Executive VP Rommin Adl as part of an interview series on business simulations.  Check out the white paper - it's a great, short read and a nice synopsis of this great approach to experiential learning.

Best Practices in Online Learning: Full Sail University

At Harvard Business Publishing we’re investigating ways to best enable our customers to use our business content in online environments.  To that end we spend a good deal of time info-sharing with eductators and program designers to hear about their best practices, challenges, and lessons learned.  We recently held an information sharing session with Full Sail University.  Full Sail is one of the premier art, music, game and web design, and film schools in the world – and its online programs have been lauded for their success in engaging and educating learners (they won a “21st Century Best Practices in Distance Learning Award” in 2011 from the United States Distance Learning Association).  Here’s a review of how they achieve such great results with their online program.

Why Educational Simulations?

Experiential learning and simulation guru Clark Aldrich has a great new piece called "Why Educational Simulations? Designs to Develop Competence Plus Conviction" in the UK magazine Inside Learning Technologies & Skills.  It's a great short piece that distills his theories of "learning to do" (vs. "learning to know") down to two powerful value propositions for educational simulations: the ability to foster Competence and Conviction in users.   For more on educational simulations, experiential learning, and serious games, see the collection of works and articles at the Clark Aldrich Designs website.

The Future of Business Education

I was privileged to be invited to a “Future of Business Education” conference hosted by the Acton MBA program in Austin, Texas, this past Fall.  Jeff Sandefer, founder of the Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship and an entrepreneur, educational innovator, and philanthropist, assembled a group of entrepreneurs and thought leaders in business education to discuss some of the thornier issues facing this constituency today.  It was a provocative and inspiring few days and I’ll try and detail some of the discussion here.

Teaching Case Studies in Online Courses

At Harvard Business Publishing, part of our job is to support the use of case-method teaching (and other aspects of participant-centered learning) to the faculty and students who use our materials.  To that end a discussion has started on our Teaching Post blog that focuses on the challenges and opportunities associated with using cases and other participant-centered learning content in online learning environments.

Visit the blog entry for more details.