Harvard Business School’s new digital learning initiative, HBX, held a closing ceremony for its first offering on Sunday, Nov. 2, 2014. The event formally marked the completion of HBX’s first offering, HBX CORe (Credential of Readiness). The ceremony was held on the School’s campus in Boston.
HBX uses technology to enhance the potential to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. The CORe program is the primer for HBX. The program focuses on the fundamentals of business. HBX also offers specialized courses that focus on specific business topics. The final level of HBX is HBX Live!, a digital learning environment that will enable learners from all over the globe to connect in a real-time, one-of-a-kind studio classroom.
CORe is an interactive online program specially designed by HBS faculty members and was first offered this summer to undergraduates and recent graduates interested in learning the fundamentals of business through a suite of three courses in Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, and Financial Accounting.
The CORe program was offered for a fee to a targeted group of students, in contrast to free massive open online courses, and was based on an innovative technological platform specifically designed to offer an interactive experience that mirrors many of the elements in the HBS case teaching approach.
HBX facilitated the process of the first CORe offerings by limiting eligibility only to students enrolled in Massachusetts colleges and universities or children of Harvard University faculty, staff and alumni.
Nineteen percent of the pioneering cohort was enrolled in Harvard College, while other students represented institutions such as Amherst College, Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern University, Tufts University and Williams College.
Forty-one percent of the cohort was women and nearly 70 percent undergraduates Seven percent of the enrollees were from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Undergraduate majors of participants were divided between the humanities (39 percent), engineering and biological sciences (24 percent) and social sciences (30 percent).