students and faculty talking

Academics

Part-Time MBA - Learning Experience

Learning Experience

The Darden MBA at a pace that gives you flexibility to explore the elective period in order to help build out technical skills to help advance your career, while you remain working.

The Power of the Case Method

In contrast to a lecture-based approach to education, Darden’s case method will challenge you to discuss and debate real business problems and possible solutions. Given a specific business challenge — what would you do, why would you do it and how would you persuade your classmates to understand your point of view?

Your ideas will be tested through open dialogue with the faculty, your learning team and your classmates. In the Part-Time MBA, all students begin with a cohort-based core curriculum - the same core curriculum as Darden’s other MBA formats - taught by full-time Darden faculty. After the core, students enter an elective period, in which they can further personalize their coursework and schedule to fit their life and career.

Students choose from electives offered specifically for Part-Time MBA students, including global courses, with additional opportunities to enroll in classes in the Full-Time MBA and Executive MBA formats (space and faculty approval permitting). 

In addition, all Darden MBA students, regardless of program format, may earn any existing specialization, concentration or focus area provided the student meets the requirements of the offering.

Darden’s MBA curriculum also uses:

  • Business simulations
  • Feedback sessions
  • Carefully selected readings
  • Videos
  • Peer-mentoring
  • Role playing
  • Coaching sessions

These approaches will help you develop into an agile decision-maker with an enterprise-wide perspective.

Four-Step Learning Process

  1. Individual Work: read and consider each case on your own.

  2. Team-Based Collaboration: Share your ideas with your learning team — the group of five or six peer managers with whom you’ll study.

  3. Class: Discuss the case during an online class meeting or on-Grounds class.

  4. Reflection/Application: Reflect on how your initial ideas changed as a result of the input from your learning team, class and professors. And after each class, you have the opportunity to apply these concepts on the job, creating real-time ROI for you and your employer.