You know what they say: it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. While it's certainly advisable to take advantage of every learning opportunity you can, we often rely on our personal network when presented with–or seeking out–new opportunities.
Turning Strangers into Peers
Tapping into our connections is nothing new. The question is: How do you build those connections in an online world, with people you’ve never met? When I considered post-grad learning opportunities, it never crossed my mind that an online platform could extend my network. That’s when my research led me to HBX.
HBX, Harvard Business School’s online learning program, is a web-based learning experience like no other. The idea wasn’t just to build something that makes learning more accessible, but to provide a sense of community that extended beyond the online “classroom,” enabling learners from around the world to interact with one another via its platforms. (Those 14,000+ global learners have also been invited to gather reunion-style on the Harvard Business School campus for ConneXt. More on that later!)
“The promise of digital learning is not about reach – it’s about engagement,” explained Bharat Anand, faculty chair of HBX and professor at Harvard Business School, to a room of nearly 500 HBX participants from around the world at this year’s ConneXt event. “It’s about engaging every learner. What we learn with pleasure, we never forget.”
When developing HBX, the goal was to capture the essence of an on-campus business school experience and bring it to life for online learners. The intangible moments between students that turn learning about strategy or sales into something transformational may seem minor, but those are the moments we remember most.
Often when we go online, we erect a wall around us that allows us to disengage, losing the human connection we build when learning together in a classroom. So HBX built peer learning into every aspect of the platform and beyond, with forums where students could ask and answer questions, real-time polling, group assignments, and a vibrant Facebook group for each cohort.
“Everyone was extremely welcoming and open and offered to help me out,” said Annie Espinosa, who participated in the May 2016 CORe cohort. “I posted on our cohort Facebook group that I was having trouble with a module, asked if anyone would Skype with me, and we just hopped on [to work through the issue].”
Turning Peers into Friends
“There were several meetups,” said Mansi Pathak, from San Francisco, who completed CORe in October 2016. Facebook groups turned into real-life study groups by geography, and study groups turned into coffee dates, pizza nights, and catching up over dinner and drinks.
Added Mansi, “Finding people in your area, or who went to the same college, or from the same hometown, things like that. It was cool to get to know people [offline].”
What started as just a group of peers turned into friends, in the same way that students on a college campus would foster connections and build friend groups with peers from their classes. Except these classes were all happening online.
“I’ve maintained friendships with people I worked with on assignments or group projects,” said Elisse Catalan, from New York, who completed CORe and Disruptive Strategy. “I really enjoyed getting to know people with similar experiences.”
When you take an online class, it’s not just about learning the course content. To make the most of your experience, you must throw yourself into every aspect of the community and get to know your peers as people, not just as names behind a screen. Find out what they’re capable of, where they come from, what they care about. That can mean the difference between having a collection of casual acquaintances and developing those deep, meaningful connections that spark knowledge and, ultimately, help you learn more about the world around you.
Turning Online into Real Life
When the opportunity arose to meet in person at HBX ConneXt this past May, hundreds of students from as far away as Australia and nearby as Allston, Massachusetts, jumped at the chance. That’s because they already knew who would be coming: Their peers and friends from across the platform.
“Quite a few people came up to me and knew my name already!" explained Neha Shah from Chicago, who completed CORe in September 2016. "It was shocking, but a good shock.”
Many of the people I talked to agreed that meeting in person added a new layer of depth to the online friendships they'd formed in the course.
Added Neha, “For weeks, no one outside my cohort peers understood what we were going through because it was so rigorous, so it was great to meet people who helped you through that process. Now we can relate to it and talk about it.”
“I was really excited to meet people that I’ve seen active [online]. There are many that I’ve had discussions with, but I’ve never had the chance to spend time with them one-on-one or in-person,” said Annie.
Ultimately, business is about people. Taking an online course doesn’t change that. To be successful, you have to put yourself out there and be willing to make connections. You’ll never know who you’ll meet.
