5 Online Collaboration Lessons from Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School learned a number of lessons from the launch of its HBX online program last summer.

The online education initiative was designed to counter the current passive model of watching lectures from subject experts, according to Harvard Business Review. With this model, students collaborate consistently, interact with the material they're watching and see how what they're learning translates to the real world.

Here's what they learned: 

1. Collaboration doesn’t occur in a vacuum.
2. Incentives matter.
3. Capability, commitment and continuity are important to collaboration.
4. Norms of online collaboration can be shaped.
5. Social learning can substitute for expert knowledge. 

For more details on these lessons, check out this article from three professors who are involved in the initiative.