Management Programmes - MBA Masterclass Series

The MBA Masterclass series seeks to provide strategic knowledge, insights and awareness and allows participants the opportunity to practice strategic decision-making in a broad range of contexts.

This is a modular programme of workshops surrounded by pre and post-workshop e-learning. The series can be taken as a whole or each module is available as a one-off. Learning Dynamics will work with your HRM team to develop the MBA Masterclass series to fit the needs of your organisation.

The overall aims of the MBA Masterclass are:

To provide managers with up-to-date thinking on general business topics, through a combination of e-learning and short interactive workshops facilitated by external experts.
To provide participants with a range of models, tools and techniques that can be applied in day-to-day work within their organisation or with client businesses.
To enable participants to practice strategic decision-making via STRATuS, the unique resource-based strategic management simulation.
To provide participants with frameworks and tools that will improve the likelihood of their learning being implemented and that will lead to improved business performance in their own business or in client companies

Each module is composed of three Parts:

Part I - Materials.

Preparatory materials are likely to be a mix of paper and electronic resources, and will vary in nature from module to module. However they will generally consist of:

articles and papers which introduce ideas which will be assumed to be common knowledge at the start of the workshop
questions which are designed to start participants thinking about key issues related to a topic as it relates to their business or clients
activities which might include finding information about their business, clients, or associates.

Preparatory work means that the presenter can assume a common level of knowledge, and will therefore not need to waste precious time on covering ground that is not at an appropriate intellectual level. It also means that all participants will be in a position to contribute effectively to discussions

Part II - Workshops

The workshop for a module will last 2 or 3 days with 8-12 participants. The presenter will be covering MBA level topics, in a way that is intellectually challenging. However the experience will be far from a series of lectures. Workshops will be highly interactive, drawing on a wide range of case studies, exercises and business simulations, and discussion of issues of common concern to participatants. This interactive design with constant links to practice allows participants to become adept at applying the 'theory' and techniques covered to realistic business situations.

This constant emphasis on application will mean that the programme remains stimulating and interesting and that its relevance to participant's businesses and client businesses and their success should be obvious throughout

Part III - Materials

While it is relatively easy to learn ideas, consolidating them within your own repertoire is inevitably difficult. It is very easy to revert to long established ways of working as soon as a course is over. Part III materials are designed to help overcome this difficulty. They will comprise:

'toolkits' which provide brief summaries of key concepts and techniques covered in the workshop, together with tips on when and how to use them
additional resources - papers, articles and web references which allow participants to pursue topics in more depth

Just as work on Part I is essential to participate fully in the workshop, so Part III is essential to consolidation and development of learning from the module as a whole. Without this consolidation any benefit from the programme is likely to be small. The six modules of the MBA Masterclass series are: