The approach to teaching will depend greatly upon
the type of programme. If it is highly academic there may be a strong emphasis on the relative merits of different theories and different methods, with a strong reliance on input from lecturers or textbooks. If there is a more practical orientation, the programme may focus more on
the application of such
theories to the real world, and on the development of transferable skills. Discussion of students’ own experience will be important, and assessment is more likely to be based on real situations encountered by the students.
There is an increasing emphasis on transferable skills in higher education generally. A possible list of such skills which any MBA programme might develop, albeit in different proportions, is:
- numeracy and analytical skills – through case studies and projects;
- written presentation skills – through assignments and project reports;
- oral presentation skills – through presentations on group work;
- team skills – through group work on cases and projects;
- leadership skills – through group work and through consultancy or similar projects;
- IT skills – through use of word processing and graphics, spreadsheets, databases, the World Wide Web, and electronic conferencing;
- negotiation and other consultancy skills – through an in-company project;
- personal skills (self-organisation and time management) – through meeting programme demands;
- learning skills and self-awareness – through a continuous process of challenging personal assumptions and reflection on practice;
- critical thinking skills – through research and writing on this.
Your own needs with respect to these skills will form an individual profile: an ideal programme will match this fairly closely. Another
element of teaching approach which will be important is the degree of ‘spoonfeeding’. There are two aspects to this, one good, one bad. If you are told what to think, and what to reproduce in exams, this is not good.
Study at Master’s level should be developing your ability to think for yourself. But some institutions are very much better than others at providing you with the information and materials you need in order to study efficiently, and this sort of ‘spoonfeeding’ is all to the good for the majority of pressured students.
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MBA Teaching approach
