Collaborative team working

How you learn is an essential part of what you learn at Cranfield.

Teamwork is central to our approach to personal development and your learning experience. We believe there is no better preparation for senior management than working in a team on a wide variety of subjects - all under time pressure.

Teams at Cranfield are collaborative, dynamic and exciting. Your cohort will be divided into streams of no more than 50 - large enough to provide a diversity of experience, yet small enough to encourage discussion. You will work closely with others in teams of six or seven – designed to ensure a diverse mix of international, cultural, functional and industry experience and your team will be allocated a quiet study area where you can meet and work together.

You will learn from others, challenge preconceptions, develop trust, build knowledge and extend your own limits. Learning in teams will sometimes be challenging, however, the greatest learning often comes from the people who question you and your way of working.

“The emphasis on teamwork challenged me to improve my communication skills and taught me to be more persuasive and decisive. Class diversity was fundamental to the development of my leadership skills and the Modular MBA gave me a great opportunity to build close working relationships with my colleagues when we stayed on campus during the residential modules.”

Andre Mamprin, EMBA 2007, Brazilian
Global Supply Chain Manager, Unilever Plc

Evaluating team performance

Team working fulfils two roles at Cranfield. One of its roles is to enable you to get through a much larger workload by sharing the work and supporting each other. Its second and arguably more important role is as a vehicle for personal development.

Unique to Cranfield is the feedback system that reviews and evaluates your performance within the team. Using tools such as QOITs – Quick Outline of Interpersonal Interaction Tool, developed by Cranfield faculty, you will learn about your interpersonal skills and how to develop them.

Each learning team has a member of faculty as a supervisor and mentor to the group. They will support you and your team, meet with you to discuss progress and help you work through issues you may have. Our open door policy means that you, or your team, can contact your supervisor at any time.

Interactive learning

You will experience many teaching methods – from lectures, to case studies and role-playing exercises – in an interactive environment that inspires you to learn. Active class participation is essential and the combination of experience and diversity creates a rich learning environment.

A substantial proportion of the classroom sessions involve case studies written by members of faculty or selected from the Cranfield Case Clearing House which is the European home of Harvard case studies.

Case study learning is a three stage process:

• individual consideration – reading and analysis
• learning team discussion – sharing experience and understanding different viewpoints
• classroom discussion – to identify alternative solutions and consider the influences of culture, industry experience and values on these solutions

This approach reinforces problem-solving and analytical skills and encourages you to think creatively. ??

Supporting your learning

Graduate administration team

Known as Grad Admin, it is the administration team?s job to ensure the day-to-day smooth running of your programme. The Full-time and Executive MBA have their own programme administrators who deal with all aspects of the programme, including timetabling, assessments, and helping to organise sporting and social activities.

Grad Admin also maintain the MBA portal where you will find all the electronic resources you need to help you with your studies. The team is on hand to answer your queries, circulate messages and provide a general point of contact within the School.

Supporting your learning

IT support

IT support is provided by the School?s IT Services team who are dedicated to helping you with all your software and hardware queries.

You will be issued with a ?Cranfield ready? laptop computer for the duration of your MBA. The laptop is pre-loaded with a variety of applications, utilities and learning support materials including multimedia tutorials, attainment tests and copies of lecture slides. The laptops have free high speed access to the Internet and email facilities and you will have a personal filestore area backed up on the network.

A wireless network is available across the whole campus. The University accommodation is also cabled to enable connection to the network from student bedrooms. On-line resources are available externally via the University extranet.

Supporting your learning

Management Information Resource Centre (MIRC)

The MIRC is your gateway to a wealth of electronic resources for learning and research and is amongst the most comprehensive to be found in any top management school.

You will have access to business and management databases on and off campus 24 hours a day. The MIRC also has a language studio which offers multimedia programmes for a large number of European and Asian languages.

The MIRC team are on hand to give you the professional information support you need while you are studying with us.

Explore our databases and library catalogue.

Supporting your learning

University library service

The Kings Norton library and information service maintains a core collection of books, journals and reports, as well as nearly 200 databases and over 8,500 electronic journals. Its interlibrary loan service can give further depth to your research to get the most from key resources.

Visit the Cranfield University Library and Information Service website.