IN AUGUST, the Macquerie Graduate
School of Management (MGSM) at
Macquarie University in Sydney,
Australia, announced it would
offer a new Global MBA exclusively
on Coursera, the online platform
that delivers education via massive
open online courses, or MOOCs.
The first cohort will begin the
program in May 2019.
The MGSM’s 24-course Global
MBA will develop students’ capabilities
across six areas: leading,
strategizing, analyzing, influencing,
adapting, and problem solving.
Its curriculum follows a “stackable
credential” model, in which
students earn certificates as they
progress through the program.
The curriculum features asynchronous
lectures and assignments;
live video sessions with
instructors; and group projects,
which globally distributed student
teams will complete using digital
communication platforms. All
courses are open to those who
wish to take them for free without
receiving course credits.
On average, Gies
College’s iMBA
students are 37
years old with
12 years of work
experience.
Those who wish to earn the
degree must apply and be admitted
under MGSM’s normal admission
criteria. Nontraditional students
who do well in certificate programs could be admitted into the degree
program. Tuition and fees for the
program are set at AUD$33,000
(approximately US$23,300).
Macquarie’s Global MBA joins
one other open-course MBA on
the Coursera platform, the iMBA
offered by the Gies College of Business
at the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign. Gies College
launched the iMBA on Coursera in
January 2016. The program graduated
its first cohort of 76 students
this May, making the college one
of the first business schools to take
an MBA cohort entirely through
the program using Coursera’s
MOOC platform.
Any student can take an iMBA
course, also offered in a stackable
format, to try out the program for
free; those who wish to continue
the experience can then apply
to the full program. The college
now has more than 1,100 students
enrolled in its iMBA.
With total tuition set at
US$22,000, the iMBA is an affordable,
flexible option for students
prevented from enrolling in traditional
programs because of barriers
such as high cost, family commitments,
or distance from campus.
Larry DeBrock, a professor of finance
and economics who teaches
a live video class session each week
in the iMBA program, explains that
the course format relies heavily on
prepping all material in advance, so
that he is not simply delivering lectures.
“Instead,” says DeBrock, “we
may start an economic markets
class looking at a sea of faces telling
us what gas prices are in their city.
It’s relevant, real-time learning
created by real-world conditions.”