Blended learning, courses combining online and face-to-face tuition, are seen by many potential business education students as the ideal marriage of modern teaching methods.

混合式学习（结合在线与面对面授课）被许多潜在的商科教育学生视为现代教学方法的完美结合。

Henley Business School’s latest annual survey of corporate¹ learning found that half the organisations in its sample were already looking at doing some sort of blended learning during 2015.

亨利商学院(Henley Business School)针对企业培训的最新年度调查发现，样本中一半的组织已经考虑在2015年开展一些混合式培训。

This is in contrast to pure online business teaching, typified by massive open online courses (Moocs), enthusiasm for which dipped compared with previous years, according to Henley’s research.

亨利商学院的研究表明，这种趋势与纯在线商科教学形成对比，后者的典型形式是“大规模开放在线课程”(Mooc)，但其受欢迎的程度与前几年相比有所下降。

Such findings are music to the ears of David Lefevre, programme director of Imperial College Business School’s blended learning course, the Global MBA. This programme uses the web to enable people to learn wherever they are, but also encourages them to meet in person periodically at Imperial’s London campus.

对于帝国理工商学院(Imperial College Business School)混合式学习课程——全球MBA——项目主任戴维•勒费夫尔(David Lefevre)来说，这些发现十分中听。这一项目利用万维网，使人们无论在哪里都能够学习，但也鼓励他们每隔一段时间回到帝国理工的伦敦校园开展面对面学习。

Its development began when Dr Lefevre, who describes himself as a “lecturer who got excited about technology”, created an online mathematics course. The pass rate of those who took maths immediately improved, something Dr Lefevre puts down to people being allowed to study at their own pace.

这一项目始于勒费夫尔博士（自称为“对科技感到兴奋的讲师”）创建的一个在线数学课程。选修数学课程的学员的及格率迅速提高，勒费夫尔将此归功于他们被允许按照自己的进度学习。

From that single subject, Dr Lefevre started developing the Global MBA. Students attend online lectures, carry out projects and participate in peer-learning sessions, which, he says, are on a par² with any classroom teaching on a business school campus.

从这个单一学科起步，勒费夫尔开始开发全球MBA项目。他说，学员们参加在线讲座，完成课题并参与同行学习会议，这些可以媲美任何商学院的课堂教学。

Teaching on the Global MBA programme is via the Hub developed by Dr Lefevre’s team. There is a news feed and the platform plugs in to email and social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. The Hub analyses students’ performance, enabling them to track their progress and benchmark this against other people in their class.

全球MBA项目的教学通过勒费夫尔团队研发的名为Hub的系统实施。系统中有一个新闻源(news feed)以及链接电子邮件和社交媒体（如Facebook和Twitter）账户的平台插件。该系统可以分析学员的表现，让他们能够跟踪自己的进展，并与班里的其他人进行基准比对。

Unlike purely³ online business education courses, Global MBA students are required to spend blocks of time together at Imperial’s central London campus. For example, at the beginning of this year a cohort of 70 students from 24 countries, began their studies with a week-long residential⁴ session at Imperial. The aim is to create strong relationships between the students to make later online interactions more dynamic, so there were team-building exercises and socialising.

不同于纯在线商科教育课程，全球MBA的学员被要求在帝国理工位于伦敦市中心的校园里一起度过大段时光。例如，今年初，来自24个国家的70名学员以一周的住校学习开始他们的学业。目的是培养学员之间良好的人际关系，使后面的在线互动更加活跃，所以，住校期间安排了团队建设训练和社交活动。

After the initial meeting, students do not meet again formally as a group for another year, although they may do so informally in different places and are encouraged to return to Imperial’s campus whenever they are in London.

初次见面之后，学员们在一年内不会再集体正式见面，尽管他们可以在其他地方非正式地会面，而且学校鼓励他们，只要身在伦敦，无论何时都可以回到帝国理工的校园。

“The networking part of it is absolutely fundamental,” Dr Lefevre says. “Once you have built these bonds, students work together much better.”

“人脉部分绝对是根本的，”勒费夫尔说。“一旦你建立起这些纽带，学员们可以更好地一起合作。”

Global MBA students pay £32,000. “Online teaching is expensive,” Dr Lefevre says. “We are still using the same faculty⁵, the same career resources, all the costs are similar.”

全球MBA项目的学员需要支付3.2万英镑的学费。“在线教学是昂贵的，”勒费夫尔说。“我们仍使用同样的师资和同样的职业资源，所有的成本都很相似。”

Does he think that this puts the Global MBA at a disadvantage compared with largely free Moocs? No, Dr Lefevre says. “When you look at the detail of an MBA, you cannot have a free course. An MBA filters people, so if you have open qualifications where anyone can take it, then it is worthless. Computer-marked assessments⁶ are getting better, but to do it well you need a tutor. Then there is the cost of careers counselling.

在被问及他是否认为这会使全球MBA项目与基本上免费的Mooc相比处于劣势地位时，勒费夫尔的回答是否定的。“当你看看一个MBA的细节时，你不可能得到免费的课程。MBA的意义就在于过滤人，所以如果你提供开放的学历，任何人都可以拿到，那么它就一文不值。电脑打分的评估正在改进，但要做得出色，你需要一位导师。此外还有职业咨询的成本。”

“We may well develop cheaper models, but if you go down the cheaper route with the MBA, then it loses something. It becomes something else.”

“我们也可以开发更便宜的模型，但如果你的MBA项目走廉价的路线，那么它就会失去什么。就不是原汁原味的MBA了。”

There are differences between the Global MBA intake⁷ of students and those that apply to Imperial’s traditional MBA. The Global MBA students come from a much wider range of industries, for one thing; have a wider age range; and have a more balanced gender⁸ split.

全球MBA项目招收的学员与申请帝国理工传统MBA项目的学生有所差别。首先，全球MBA项目的学员来自更大范围的不同产业；年龄分布更广；而性别比例更加平衡。

Students on the Global MBA course tend to have a broader range of motivations for studying than those on a campus MBA. They might be looking to re-enter the job market or acquire skills to run a business.

比起在校的MBA学生，全球MBA课程的学员往往有更广泛的学习动机。他们可能希望重返职场，或是获得经营企业的技能。

“When you put them together, their differences is what they are talking about,” Dr Lefevre says. “But we all have this common goal — they are all eager to learn skills — and they all want to progress through the course.”

“当你把他们聚在一起时，他们之间的差异是他们谈论的话题，”勒费夫尔说。“但我们都有一个共同的目标——他们都渴望学到技能，都想顺利完成这个课程。”

There is still a market for traditional classroom-taught MBA and executive MBA programmes, Dr Lefevre adds, but he is convinced that online teaching will become the dominant⁹ method.

勒费夫尔补充说，传统的以课堂教学为主的MBA和EMBA项目仍有市场，但他坚信，在线教学将成为主导的方式。

“I am the digital guy, so I think this will be far more popular. It is the growth sector¹⁰.”

“我是相信‘数字化’的人，所以我认为它将越来越受欢迎。它是一个增长领域。”