The 3 Day Learning Cycle

The MBA started for real this week. One week of lessons over and it feels like we've been here for months already. By about Wednesday we were all starting to dream about a sleep in on Saturday morning. I'm still trying to work out the best way to get through the work and how to best use our learning team time.

Each day has a 4 hr block of 3 lectures either in the morning or afternoon and the other part of the day is largely devoted to learning team time. Evenings, you then have to do your own reading/other work. The process here largely revolves around the 3 day learning cycle. Each team is doing it a bit differently and we're all feeling our way through it but this is what our team is doing. We're drawn up a roster with 2 people's names beside each lecture for the term. That means they are responsible for studying for that lecture and coming to team meetings reading to summarise it and help share what they've learnt with the rest of the team. So for Wednesday's 3 lectures, everyone reads one subject on Monday night then we all discuss all 3 subjects during Tuesday's team meetings and should then all be well prepared for Wednesday's lectures. The exception is when we're discussing a case study, in which case everyone needs to have at least had a quick read before coming to the meeting.

So far it's going okay but we haven't really worked out how best to summarise things for a group of people who all learn and study differently and just how much time/detail we go into for each subject. It got pretty hard yesterday (Friday afternoon) when everyone was tired and dreaming of the weekend but we're making an effort in our team to try to stick to a Monday to Friday schedule and keep weekends free - other than individual work. We know there will be times when it isn't possible but it's a good plan for now at least. We're also conscious that the work load is going to get MUCH greater over the next few weeks and the extra curricular commitments haven't really started yet so we're trying to get the learning team working well as early as possible.

It wasn't all hard work this week though. The first of what will be regular Thursday night socials was held this week. Theme - 70s and 80s night. Some pretty scary costumes and really funny dancing. Crawling off to bed at 2am when I had to be in a lecture at 8:45am the next morning looking vaguely intelligent wasn't the best move but at least I wasn't the only one looking a little worse for wear. It was a great excuse to get away from the books for a couple of hours if nothing else.

Orientation Week

We've only just finished our orientation week and everyone's already exhausted. I didn't really believe all the alumni that told me just how big the workload was going to be but I believe them now! A group of last year's MBA students along with some of the faculty passed on how the Cranfield school of management operates and worked on quickly getting us to know the people in the groups we'll be working (VERY closely) with over the next year ie. our streams and learning teams.

There are 138 MBA students here this year and we've been broken up into three streams - red (me), blue and green. The learning team is the group that I'm likely to spend 3-4 hours a day with preparing for lectures, presentations and assignments. My team of 6 covers 5 continents. We've got an accountant from Nigeria, a scientist (biotech) from Ireland, an engineer from India, an engineer from Peru, a supply specialist from India and me. Our first group work assignment went fairly well and we all get alone well so far but the real test is when the pressure starts to mount.

Already we've got a healthy rivalry going between the streams. Red stream won the sports day on Wednesday and each stream put on a 30 minute caberat show on Thursday night. The links on the right will take you to web albums with lots of photos from this week. We've done all the serious necessary things around registration, sorting out computers and being sorted into learning teams. I can now find my way between buildings without getting lost, have tracked down my locker and can find the two pubs on site (yes, small university - two pubs!). We've got to know each other and a bit more about the countries that everyone comes from - Dad, I told your story of hitting a kangaroo in a VW beetle. Got a good laugh. We've also spent a lot of time having a lot of fun. We've done a lot of laughing, clapping, yelling, clapping, drinking and a bit more clapping.

This afternoon was a little less happy. I've spent most of this week telling people how Australia was going to flog the poms in the rugby. Sitting in the pub with only 1 other Aussie and a room full of poms made losing today a little bit more painful.