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.