Attention Cord Cutters

Don’t Binge on Mad Men; binge on online courses

Netflix binge-watching has been a thing for nearly five years. Now, there’s binge-learning. “The barriers to learning are coming down,” says Nitin Joglekar, a dean’s research fellow and an associate professor of operations & technology management. And that means more people can take classes the way they watch their favorite shows: online and without waiting a week in between. “The education market is ready for a disruption,” he says.

Joglekar, who directs Questrom’s digital learning initiatives, is part of the BU team behind the School’s two new online MicroMasters programs: digital product management and digital leadership. The courses in both programs can be applied toward a Master of Science in Digital Innovation. The School has also launched seven individual online courses on topics such as social media marketing and business analytics; all the new programs are offered through the edX platform.

Joglekar says the MicroMasters—with their mix of self-paced courses and support from faculty—will help students take advantage of digital business trends.

“We talked to top-notch companies and we got good validation that they were looking for this kind of talent,” Joglekar says. “They tell us the problems they face, who they are hiring, and how they might train them. They may even encourage their own employees to take the classes.”

In his own edX course on product management, which can be audited for free, Joglekar says he teaches that “paying attention to details and operations really matters in a digital world. Your reputation is only as good as what you can deliver; in the digital world, it’s very visible who’s delivering and who’s not.”

Take a Questrom online course—you can sample many of them for free—at edx.org/school/bux.