In his “Knowledge-based Strategy” class at Harvard Business School (HBS), Professor Hirotaka Takeuchi offered an extremely dynamic class using a case method – facilitating discussion using real cases of corporations. The class brought together students both from the Business School and also from other schools. The class required a place for mutual information to be shared: a digital learning space that could be implemented cross-institutionally, outside of the actual classroom, among teachers and students, in order to support the development of the class.

manaba allowed Professor Takeuchi to communicate freely with his students. His responses to students’ questions were available for all students to see. When he wanted to follow up on an element of the class or share supplementary materials, he was able to do so with manaba. In other words, this easy-to-use and accessible system lowered the pre-existing barrier between students and professor.

Professor Takeuchi required students to submit their final papers on manaba and then allowed them to read each other’s work after submission, hoping this would affect the quality.

The results were outstanding. The students produced surprisingly high quality papers. In fact, the after-class survey indicated that 90% of students actually went to manaba to read their peers’ papers, and over a half of them worked harder because they knew that their classmates were going to see their work. That is what Professor Takeuchi called the real “manaba effect.”