Fieldwork—i.e. going out and talking to people—is a big change for HBS. Its students used to sit in a classroom and discuss case studies written by professors. Now they may also work in a developing country and launch a start-up. “Learning by doing” will become the norm, if a radical overhaul of the MBA curriculum succeeds.
进行实地调查，例如这样走出去直接与他人交谈，对哈佛商学院来说是一个很大的改变。过去，哈佛商学院的学生们通常是坐在教室里讨论着教授编写的案例。而现在，他们可能正在某个发展中国家工作或者创业。如果这次工商管理课程的改革取得成功，那么“实践学习法”将会成为哈佛商学院新的模式。
The 900 students arriving in Boston this summer for their two-year course were told they would be guinea pigs. The new practical addition to HBS’s curriculum is known as “FIELD” (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development). Not all the staff and students are overjoyed to be experimented on. But the man responsible, Nitin Nohria, who became dean of HBS in July 2010, says that “if it works, the FIELD method could become an equal partner to the case method.”
今年夏天到波士顿来完成两年学业的九百名学生被告知他们将会成为这一新模式的试验品。哈佛商学院课程里新添加的强调实践的“FIELD”课程是一个领导力塑造实地浸入式体验平台。虽然并不是所有教职员工和学生都很乐意接受试验，但是负责人也就是2010年七月上任的哈佛商学院院长尼廷·诺里亚却说：“如果这种方法奏效，
FIELD法将会与案例教学法并重使用”。
Long before he became dean, Mr Nohria lamented the failure of business schools to fulfil their mission of turning management into a profession similar to law or medicine. Asked what should be expected from someone with an MBA, he replies that “obviously, they should master a body of knowledge. But we should also expect them to apply that knowledge with some measure of judgment.” MBA students have long been sent on summer internships with prospective employers, but HBS, like most business schools, did little else to help them with the practical application of management studies.
早在成为商学院院长之前，罗利亚先生就为商学院没能成功将管理转变为一个像法律、医学那样专业的学科而感到遗憾。当被问及一个获取工商管理学硕士学位的人应该具备何种素质时，罗利亚先生回答说：“显然，他们应掌握大量相关知识。我们也希望他们使用一定的判断标准来应用知识。”工商管理专业的学生一直以来都被送到那些可能成为他们未来老板的人身边进行暑期实习，但是像大多数商学院一样，哈佛大学商学院为管理学学生提供的实践机会也仅此而已。 What happens in the second year of the new course is still being worked out. But the first year has three elements. First, team-building exercises. Students take turns to lead a group engaged in a project such as designing an “eco-friendly sculpture”. They learn to collaborate and to give and take feedback. These exercises are loosely based on ones used in the US
army.
下学年新课程的变化还有待观察，但上学年的课程包括三个基本方面：首先，是团队建设练习。学生们轮流领导小组进行课题研究，比如设计一个保护生态的雕塑。学生们从中学会相互合作，提出和接受反馈信息。这些练习大体参照了美国军队的演习模式。
Second, students will be sent to work for a week with one of more than 140 firms in 11 countries. Already the new intake have had conference calls with these companies, ranging from the Brazilian soap maker to a Chinese
property
firm,
and
gone
off-campus
to
conduct
product-development “dashes” like the one in Copley Mall. This sort of structured learning-by-doing is a world away from HBS’s traditional encouragement of students to “go on an adventure” outside of classes. 此外，学生将被派往到分布在11个国家的140多个公司中的一个工作一周。新进职员已与这些公司召开了电话会议，这些公司里既有巴西的肥皂制造商，也有中国的房地产商。他们还在校园外进行了产品开发试验，就像之前在科普雷购物广场里做的一样。这种实践学习法与哈佛商学院传统的鼓励学生在课外冒险投机的方法很是不同。 In the third novel part of the course, students will be given eight weeks, and seed money of $3,000 each, to launch a small company. The most successful, as voted by their fellow students, will get more funding. It remains to be seen if this amounts to much more than a souped-up business-plan competition, though Mr Nohria says he hopes some real
businesses will be created. (If only HBS had thought of this when Bill Gates was thinking of starting Microsoft, or Mark Zuckerberg was creating Facebook—perhaps the school would have received shares in those firms.)
这个课程的第三个新颖之处，就是学生们每人会得到3000美金，然后用八周的时间来建一个小型的公司。其中得到学生们投票最多的，也就是最成功的公司创办者将得到更多的资助。这种做法是否比一个花哨的商业企划竞赛更有价值还有待观察，即使罗利亚先生说他希望可以创建一些真正的企业。（如果当年比尔盖茨考虑建立微软公司、或者马克?扎克伯格创建Facebook的时候哈佛商学院能想到这个教学方法，也许现在学校还能得到这些公司的股份）。
It is unclear how much the one-week working assignments will achieve. Pankaj Ghemawat, a management guru, says “the literature suggests that an immersion experience needs to be at least 2-3 weeks and be backed up with time in the classroom.” The HBS students’ classroom preparation will have to be pretty thorough, then, to make up for the brevity of their field trips. Moreover, some of the HBS alumni who have agreed to offer work experience at their firms say they are unsure what meaningful work they can offer the students.
目前我们还不清楚这个为期一周工作能够达到怎样的效果。管理专家格玛沃特说：“过去的一些文献资料表明，学生们至少需要2-3周才能完全投入到这种浸入式强化训练，而这却是与学生们的上课时间冲
突的。”为了弥补如此短暂的实地考察时间所带来的效果，哈佛商学院的学生不得不做好周密的课前准备。此外，一些答应提供工作的哈佛商学院的毕业生并不确定他们给学生们提供什么样的工作是有意义的。
Privately, some faculty members are skeptical that all this change will be worthwhile. In January, the vote in favor of trying the field method was “as enthusiastic as you could get from a faculty,” says Mr Nohria, wryly. He wisely ensured that ownership of the idea was widely spread by delegating design of the new curriculum to several faculty committees. The vote gave the go-ahead to run a “delicate experiment for 3-5 years to see if we can move the needle”, he says, compared with the 13 years it took to develop the case method into more or less what it is today. 私底下，一些工教员对这种变化是否有价值持怀疑态度。罗利亚先生幽默地说：“一月份，整个学院支持这个实地考察方法的投票多得可以全票通过。”他很明智，通过把设计新课程的任务委派给其他几个教师委员会的方式，使这个教学方法的所有权得到了最广泛的传播。他说，与花费13年时间将案例教学法发展到如今的状况相比，这次的投票更是给那些有进取心的人一个机会在3-5年精密的实验后证明此教学方法是否切实可行。
The experiment does not come cheap, adding 10-15% to the course’s cost (students pay at least $84,000 a year), which HBS will bear while it figures out what works. A lot is at stake. For where Harvard leads, other