虚拟课堂真正的难题在于，雇主如何看待没有真实学位的商学教育。许多MOOC课程通常会有偿提供一份结业证书（SOA）。皮卡德很怀疑这种证书的价值。她指出，大多数求职者不会把自己的成绩单给面试官看，更不用说一堆结业表。此外，课程的难度和质量参差不齐，因此人们很难判断这种结业证书的可信度。她说：“如何完整呈现自己的学习情况，对此，我一直在努力想办法。我目前主要依赖博客，这样其他人就能详细了解我做过什么……”
对皮卡德来说，知识比正式的证书更重要。她并不打算进军金融业或咨询业，在这些行业，MBA是获得好工作的先决条件。相反，凭借自己在尼加拉瓜担任农业与食品安全志愿者的经验，她打算从事可持续供应链开发方面的工作，重点是咖啡。她还计划把自己的博客扩展成一种资源，为志趣相投的人们提供一个社区：在这里，既可以省钱，又不会错过商学院课程。
皮卡德显然已经规划好了自己的职业方向。然而， MOOC的反对者众多，且十分活跃，他们反对的理由也一大堆。但“免费MBA”博客却认为，这些否定者们忽视了互联网教育的潜力。皮卡德说道：“最近有许多文章在谈论MOOC的失败，许多人认为它与课堂教育相差甚远……尽管它并不是人们所期待的人人平等的教育改革，但我却看到了MOOC许多积极的方面。”
她坚信，对于合适的人，MOOC教育能够像课堂教育和在线MBA课程一样有效。她说：“如果一本书能让你从中学到知识，MOOC自然也可以。而且，从MOOC中，你可以学到更多。”皮卡德愿意用一个博客和1,000美元为MOOC的未来下注——如果赌赢，她不仅能接受高水平的商学教育，更能省下数万美元。（财富中文网）
译者：刘进龙/汪皓
The real elephant in the virtual classroom is how employers will perceive a business education that doesn't come with a bona fide degree. Many MOOC courses offer a Statement of Accomplishment (SOA), often for a fee. Pickard is skeptical of their value. Most jobseekers wouldn't bring their transcripts to an interview, much less a stack of course completion forms, she points out. Also, the level of difficulty and quality of courses ranges widely, making it tricky to decipher how much credence to give a particular SOA. "I'm still struggling with how to present it overall," she says. "For me, at this point, it really does hinge on the blog, so I can direct somebody there to explore what I've done...."
For Pickard, the knowledge is more important than the formal credential, anyway. She has no plans to enter finance or consulting, where an MBA is often a prerequisite for top jobs. Rather, building on her experience as an agriculture and food security volunteer in Nicaragua, she plans to work in sustainable supply chain development, with a focus on coffee. She also plans to expand her blog into a resource and community for like-minded students looking to save money without missing out on the B-school network.
Pickard certainly has her work cut out for her. The critics of MOOCs are an active bunch with plenty of fodder to pull from. But the No-Pay MBA argues that these naysayers are missing the potential of an Internet education. "I've seen a lot of articles come out recently talking about the failures of MOOCs and people saying it's not as good as a classroom experience ... it's not the egalitarian revolution in education that people were hoping for, but I see so many positive things about MOOCs," says Pickard.
She's particularly adamant that, for the right person, a MOOC education can be just as effective as classroom-based and online MBA programs. "If you can learn from a book, you can learn from a MOOC, and you can probably actually learn better from a MOOC than you can from a book," she says. Pickard's willing to bet on it with a blog and $1,000 -- if right, she'll come out with a quality business education and save tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
你没看错。不要100,000，不要10,000，读完MBA只要不到1,000美元，而且课程都是哈佛、沃顿、耶鲁这些顶级商学院的课程。具体怎么做？劳里?皮卡德会告诉你。她正在立志成为整合工商管理课程第一人，通过大规模在线公开课平台，拼凑出一整套工商管理课程。
转贴到：
关注如果一切顺利，劳里?皮卡德将以不足1,000美元的代价，在三年内获得自己的MBA学位。她将攻读哈佛（Harvard）、沃顿（Wharton）和耶鲁（Yale）以及其他顶级商学院的课程。而与此同时，她可以继续在美国国际开发署（USAID）的全职工作，担任乡镇企业开发与创业专员。她将在卢旺达的基加利完成自己的学业。
这样的好事听起来令人难以置信，但32岁的劳里却志在必得。如果成功取得MBA学位，她将成为世界上第一个通过大规模在线公开课（MOOC）平台集齐整套工商管理课程的人。MOOC提供免费或廉价课程，只要有互联网连接，任何人都可以访问、学习。
一开始，皮卡德并未打算花很少的钱去接受商学教育。实际上，她最初关注的是更为传统的途径，而且，从她的背景来看，她也有条件去攻读一个精英课程。皮卡德的履历中包括欧柏林大学（Oberlin College）政治学专业文学学士学位、坦普尔大学（Temple University）地理与城市研究专业文学硕士学位，还曾参加过美国和平队（Peace Corps），并担任过国际金融公司（International Finance Corporation）驻尼加拉瓜的工作人员。
她说：“我开始考虑的是传统的、位于美国的高端MBA课程，价格昂贵。但后来我放弃了这种想法，转而考虑学期较短的位于欧洲的MBA课程。因为这些课程只需要一半的时间，成本只有美国课程的四分之一左右。”皮卡德自己也承认，她“并不是从一开始就接受”MOOC这种方式。但后来一位朋友在MOOC提供商Coursera报了一门金融课程，于是她也开始重新考虑传统MBA。她说：“我在想：‘我也可以这么做。’于是，我开始查找相关的信息，正是在那时，我开始萌生了通过免费课程攻读MBA的想法。”
皮卡德在互联网上四处搜索其他MOOC MBA课程，结果却一无所获。她找到了一些从投机角度来讨论这个问题的文章，但除了社交网站Poets&Quants的有关文章外，其他的文章都没有提到具体的做法。于是，皮卡德决定在个人博客“免费MBA”（The No-Pay MBA）中记录自己的学习历程，供其他有类似想法的学生借鉴。到目前为止，共有五到十位志同道合的学生与她取得了联系。
一年前，不可能会有人想到能通过MOOC取得MBA。但据国际商学院联合会（Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International）统计，在2012年2月至11月的九个月期间，提供免费在线商学课程的机构数量从26家增加到51家，翻了一番。与此同时，教授MOOC课程的商学教师数量也增加了一倍以上，从39名增加到83名。
皮卡德研究了沃顿、哈佛、斯坦福（Stanford）和麻省理工（MIT）等商学院的课程，制定了自己的课程计划。她的课程设计非常灵活，因为MOOC课程没有保障：“你不知道它们会什么时候提供，也不知道它们还会不会再次提供。”因此，她并没有设定一个严格的课程列表，而是按照课题组织学习过程。第一学期，她选择了标准MBA核心课程中常见的三个课题：管理、商业道德和领导力，另外还包括金融与会计。这些课程既有沃顿商学院克里斯蒂安?特尔维施教授的《运营管理入门》（An Introduction to Operations），也有日内瓦大学（University of Geneva）多位教授授课的《国际组织管理》(International Organizations Management)。皮卡德从多个MOOC平台选择课程，包括Coursera、Open Yale、iTunesU和Udacity等。到目前为止，Coursera所提供课程的多样性和质量以及Udacity的实践技能方法给她留下了最深刻的印象。不过，她一直期待着哈佛商学院能推出MOOC平台——但后者的正式发布时间目前仍然不清楚。
If everything goes according to plan, Laurie Pickard will earn her MBA in three years for less than $1,000. She'll take classes from Harvard, Wharton, and Yale, among other top-tier schools. And she'll tackle it all while keeping her full-time job as a rural enterprise development and entrepreneurship specialist at USAID. She'll accomplish all of this from Kigali, Rwanda.
It sounds too good to be true. But Pickard, 32, is determined to pull it off. If successful, she'll arguably be the first person in the world to cobble together an MBA program from massive open online courses (MOOCs), free or low-cost classes accessible to anyone with Internet access.
Pickard didn't plan to pave the way for earning a dirt-cheap business education. In fact, she initially had her sights set on a more conventional path -- and she has the background to get into an elite program. Pickard's resume includes a B.A. in politics from Oberlin College, an M.A. in geography and urban studies from Temple University, and stints with the Peace Corps and the International Finance Corporation in Nicaragua.
"I was looking at traditional, U.S.-based, high-end, expensive MBAs, and then I kind of dropped that idea in favor of shorter, European-based MBAs ... that take half the time and cost a quarter as much," she says. By her own admission, Pickard was "not an early adopter" of the MOOC movement. But after a friend enrolled in a finance course with MOOC provider Coursera, she reconsidered the traditional MBA. "I was thinking, 'I could do that.' And so I started looking into what was out there, and that's when I got this idea that I should just do an MBA out of free courses," she says.
Pickard scoured the Internet to find other MOOC MBAs, but came up dry. She uncovered a few articles that discussed the subject from a speculative standpoint, but outside of Poets&Quants' story on the subject, none suggested ways to actually do it. Pickard decided she would document her own journey in a blog, The No-Pay MBA, so other like-minded students could use her path as a resource. So far, five to 10 students attempting the same thing have reached out to her.
Only a year ago, it would not have been possible to even consider getting the equivalent of an MBA via MOOCs. But in the space of just nine months in 2012, from February to November, the number of institutions offering free online business courses has doubled to 51 from 26, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International. The number of business faculty teaching MOOC courses has more than doubled in the same timeframe to 83 from 39.
Pickard developed her program by reviewing B-school curricula at Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. She designed it to be flexible because MOOC courses are not guaranteed: "You have no idea when they'll be offered and if they'll ever be offered again," she points out. Rather than setting a strict course list, she organized her degree path by themes. Her first semester tackles three topics generally found in a standard MBA core curriculum: management, business ethics and leadership, as well as finance and accounting. The courses range from An Introduction to Operations taught by Wharton's Christian Terwiesch, to International Organizations Management, led by a group of professors from the University of Geneva. Pickard selects her classes from a variety of MOOC platforms, including Coursera, Open Yale, iTunesU, and Udacity. So far, she has been most impressed with the variety and quality of Coursera's offerings, and Udacity's practical-skill approach. But she's eagerly awaiting the release of Harvard Business School's MOOCs -- the official launch date remains unknown.
皮卡德在四个月内完成了五门课程。最初，她计划在两到三年时间学完16门课，但她非常享受学习的过程。因此，她决定继续学习，积攒的学分将超过大多数MBA课程的要求。她说：“课程的数量很多，选择课程就像为自己选择冒险故事一样。我喜欢学校，所以面对这么多的课程，就像刚进校园时第一次拿到一个学期的课程目录一样，令人兴奋不已。看着这些课程你会想：‘哇，我要学这个，我要学那个。’”虽然课程的质量和难度千差万别，但皮卡德指出，实体教学也存在同样的问题。
此外，皮卡德对于MOOC课程的虚拟性也不以为意。她的丈夫是一位外交官，未来四年将常驻卢旺达，因此在线课程反而更适合她。她说：“我的想法总是变来变去，对于商务的认识也在扩展和成长。以前的学习经历让我有全身心沉浸在学习中的感受，而在线学习一样能给我这种感受。从这个角度来说，这是MOOC的真正好处所在。”
但MOOC的MBA并不适合所有人。要在两到三年内坚持参加在线课程并完成学业，如何保持学习动力是初学者面临的一个棘手的问题。宾夕法尼亚大学（University of Pennsylvania）对100万名MOOC用户进行的调查发现，实际学完课程的仅有4%。皮卡德形容自己是一个积极上进、严于律己的人。她会把周六的时间，有时也会拿出周日上午的时间，来进行课程学习，而且每个工作日会花30分钟时间复习。尽管如此，在线学习依然很有挑战性，这正是她创建那个博客的原因。她解释说：“它相当于我的公开承诺，不论我的博客有多少读者，即使只有我和几个朋友会关注我的博客。因为它会激励我，让我知道有其他人在见证我能否兑现自己的承诺。”
MOOC批评者认为，大规模在线模式不支持教师与学生之间进行有意义的互动。皮卡德参加的最大规模课程足有120,000名学生。有一次，课堂作业要求在讨论区发表评论，结果造成混乱，讨论区一下子涌出了成千上万条信息。她这样评价留言板：“其中的信息量过于庞杂，很难做到每一条都认真去看。”有些课程的学生会组织同一个城市的同学聚会，但像皮卡德这样的国际学生，却可能是某个国家唯一登记某一门课程的人。
不过，皮卡德对于缺少课堂互动却不以为然——在本科和研究生学习阶段，她已经经历过大量的课堂互动。她解释说：“因为我曾经有过课堂互动的经历，所以我可以在其它地方主动寻找类似的互动。因此我并不觉得在网上学习就有很大的缺失。”
然而，在传统MBA课程中培养的人际关系往往会延续到课堂之外，成为未来的助力；对于许多商学学生来说，这些人脉才是这个成本超过100,000美元学位的主要卖点。皮卡德也承认，在线学习无法像哈佛或斯坦福的MBA那样积累人脉，但她认为，自己的情况很特殊：她学习MBA的主要目的是掌握技能，而不是积攒人脉。她解释说：“相对于商学院积攒的人脉，开发领域的人脉对我来说更重要。所以我才认为：‘我真正需要的，是那些能够应用到我当前从事的商业开发当中的技能。’”
Four months in, Pickard has completed five courses. Initially, she planned to complete 16 courses over two to three years, but she's enjoying the process so much, she'll likely keep going and exceed the credits required by most MBA programs. "There are so many course offerings out there, that it's like a choose-your-own-adventure story," she says. "I loved school, so it's kind of like that excitement you get when you first get the course catalog for the semester, and you're looking through it like, 'Oh, I want to take that, I want to take that," she says. Although the courses vary in terms of quality and difficulty, Pickard points out that the same problem affects bricks-and-mortar programs.
Pickard also doesn't seem to mind the virtual component. Given that her husband, a foreign service officer, is stationed in Rwanda for the next four years, the online aspect is actually a boon. "My mind is changing, and my thinking about business is really expanding and growing," she says. "I feel the same way that I felt at other times in my life when I was really immersed in an education experience. So from that standpoint, there's a true benefit to MOOCs."
But the MOOC MBA certainly isn't for everyone. For starters, maintaining the drive to actually attend and complete online classes for two or three years can be tricky. A University of Pennsylvania study of 1 million MOOC users found that only 4% actually completed the courses. Pickard describes herself as motivated and disciplined. She dedicates Saturday and sometimes Sunday mornings to coursework and spends 30 minutes each workday reviewing lessons. But it can still be challenging, which is why she created a blog, she says. "I've made a public commitment, so it doesn't matter how many readers I have, even if it's just me and a few of my friends. It motivates me to know that there's some kind of external evidence of whether I made good on my commitment," she explains.
MOOC critics contend that the massive online format doesn't allow for meaningful interaction with students and faculty. Pickard's largest course had 120,000 students. An assignment to post a comment in a class-wide discussion forum resulted in a jumbled mess of thousands and thousands of messages. "There was too much going on to really engage substantively," she says of the message board. Some MOOC students arrange citywide meetups around particular courses, but an international student such as Pickard may be the only person in a given country enrolled in a class.
Pickard's not particularly concerned about missing the classroom interaction -- something she had as an undergraduate and as a master's student. "Because I've done that before, and I've experienced that, and I can search out experiences that can replicate that in other places, I don't feel that I'm missing all that much from taking courses online," she explains.
But often relationships forged in an traditional MBA program reach far beyond the classroom into the future; for many business students, these networks are the key selling point of a $100,000-plus degree. Pickard readily admits that she's not getting the same connections as a Harvard or Stanford MBA but also asserts that her situation is unique: She's pursuing an MBA primarily to acquire skills, not connections. "My development network is more important to me than a business school network, which is why I was thinking, 'What I really want here are the skills to move into the business end of the development work I'm doing,'" she explains.
虚拟课堂真正的难题在于，雇主如何看待没有真实学位的商学教育。许多MOOC课程通常会有偿提供一份结业证书（SOA）。皮卡德很怀疑这种证书的价值。她指出，大多数求职者不会把自己的成绩单给面试官看，更不用说一堆结业表。此外，课程的难度和质量参差不齐，因此人们很难判断这种结业证书的可信度。她说：“如何完整呈现自己的学习情况，对此，我一直在努力想办法。我目前主要依赖博客，这样其他人就能详细了解我做过什么……”
对皮卡德来说，知识比正式的证书更重要。她并不打算进军金融业或咨询业，在这些行业，MBA是获得好工作的先决条件。相反，凭借自己在尼加拉瓜担任农业与食品安全志愿者的经验，她打算从事可持续供应链开发方面的工作，重点是咖啡。她还计划把自己的博客扩展成一种资源，为志趣相投的人们提供一个社区：在这里，既可以省钱，又不会错过商学院课程。
皮卡德显然已经规划好了自己的职业方向。然而， MOOC的反对者众多，且十分活跃，他们反对的理由也一大堆。但“免费MBA”博客却认为，这些否定者们忽视了互联网教育的潜力。皮卡德说道：“最近有许多文章在谈论MOOC的失败，许多人认为它与课堂教育相差甚远……尽管它并不是人们所期待的人人平等的教育改革，但我却看到了MOOC许多积极的方面。”
她坚信，对于合适的人，MOOC教育能够像课堂教育和在线MBA课程一样有效。她说：“如果一本书能让你从中学到知识，MOOC自然也可以。而且，从MOOC中，你可以学到更多。”皮卡德愿意用一个博客和1,000美元为MOOC的未来下注——如果赌赢，她不仅能接受高水平的商学教育，更能省下数万美元。（财富中文网）
译者：刘进龙/汪皓
The real elephant in the virtual classroom is how employers will perceive a business education that doesn't come with a bona fide degree. Many MOOC courses offer a Statement of Accomplishment (SOA), often for a fee. Pickard is skeptical of their value. Most jobseekers wouldn't bring their transcripts to an interview, much less a stack of course completion forms, she points out. Also, the level of difficulty and quality of courses ranges widely, making it tricky to decipher how much credence to give a particular SOA. "I'm still struggling with how to present it overall," she says. "For me, at this point, it really does hinge on the blog, so I can direct somebody there to explore what I've done...."
For Pickard, the knowledge is more important than the formal credential, anyway. She has no plans to enter finance or consulting, where an MBA is often a prerequisite for top jobs. Rather, building on her experience as an agriculture and food security volunteer in Nicaragua, she plans to work in sustainable supply chain development, with a focus on coffee. She also plans to expand her blog into a resource and community for like-minded students looking to save money without missing out on the B-school network.
Pickard certainly has her work cut out for her. The critics of MOOCs are an active bunch with plenty of fodder to pull from. But the No-Pay MBA argues that these naysayers are missing the potential of an Internet education. "I've seen a lot of articles come out recently talking about the failures of MOOCs and people saying it's not as good as a classroom experience ... it's not the egalitarian revolution in education that people were hoping for, but I see so many positive things about MOOCs," says Pickard.
She's particularly adamant that, for the right person, a MOOC education can be just as effective as classroom-based and online MBA programs. "If you can learn from a book, you can learn from a MOOC, and you can probably actually learn better from a MOOC than you can from a book," she says. Pickard's willing to bet on it with a blog and $1,000 -- if right, she'll come out with a quality business education and save tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
虚拟课堂真正的难题在于，雇主如何看待没有真实学位的商学教育。许多MOOC课程通常会有偿提供一份结业证书（SOA）。皮卡德很怀疑这种证书的价值。她指出，大多数求职者不会把自己的成绩单给面试官看，更不用说一堆结业表。此外，课程的难度和质量参差不齐，因此人们很难判断这种结业证书的可信度。她说：“如何完整呈现自己的学习情况，对此，我一直在努力想办法。我目前主要依赖博客，这样其他人就能详细了解我做过什么……”
对皮卡德来说，知识比正式的证书更重要。她并不打算进军金融业或咨询业，在这些行业，MBA是获得好工作的先决条件。相反，凭借自己在尼加拉瓜担任农业与食品安全志愿者的经验，她打算从事可持续供应链开发方面的工作，重点是咖啡。她还计划把自己的博客扩展成一种资源，为志趣相投的人们提供一个社区：在这里，既可以省钱，又不会错过商学院课程。
皮卡德显然已经规划好了自己的职业方向。然而， MOOC的反对者众多，且十分活跃，他们反对的理由也一大堆。但“免费MBA”博客却认为，这些否定者们忽视了互联网教育的潜力。皮卡德说道：“最近有许多文章在谈论MOOC的失败，许多人认为它与课堂教育相差甚远……尽管它并不是人们所期待的人人平等的教育改革，但我却看到了MOOC许多积极的方面。”
她坚信，对于合适的人，MOOC教育能够像课堂教育和在线MBA课程一样有效。她说：“如果一本书能让你从中学到知识，MOOC自然也可以。而且，从MOOC中，你可以学到更多。”皮卡德愿意用一个博客和1,000美元为MOOC的未来下注——如果赌赢，她不仅能接受高水平的商学教育，更能省下数万美元。（财富中文网）
译者：刘进龙/汪皓
The real elephant in the virtual classroom is how employers will perceive a business education that doesn't come with a bona fide degree. Many MOOC courses offer a Statement of Accomplishment (SOA), often for a fee. Pickard is skeptical of their value. Most jobseekers wouldn't bring their transcripts to an interview, much less a stack of course completion forms, she points out. Also, the level of difficulty and quality of courses ranges widely, making it tricky to decipher how much credence to give a particular SOA. "I'm still struggling with how to present it overall," she says. "For me, at this point, it really does hinge on the blog, so I can direct somebody there to explore what I've done...."
For Pickard, the knowledge is more important than the formal credential, anyway. She has no plans to enter finance or consulting, where an MBA is often a prerequisite for top jobs. Rather, building on her experience as an agriculture and food security volunteer in Nicaragua, she plans to work in sustainable supply chain development, with a focus on coffee. She also plans to expand her blog into a resource and community for like-minded students looking to save money without missing out on the B-school network.
Pickard certainly has her work cut out for her. The critics of MOOCs are an active bunch with plenty of fodder to pull from. But the No-Pay MBA argues that these naysayers are missing the potential of an Internet education. "I've seen a lot of articles come out recently talking about the failures of MOOCs and people saying it's not as good as a classroom experience ... it's not the egalitarian revolution in education that people were hoping for, but I see so many positive things about MOOCs," says Pickard.
She's particularly adamant that, for the right person, a MOOC education can be just as effective as classroom-based and online MBA programs. "If you can learn from a book, you can learn from a MOOC, and you can probably actually learn better from a MOOC than you can from a book," she says. Pickard's willing to bet on it with a blog and $1,000 -- if right, she'll come out with a quality business education and save tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
