Collaborative Learning
Cohorts
Students spend their first year in cohorts (groups of about 70), taking the same classes across the core disciplines. The cohorts are created with diversity in mind, drawing on the complementary cultural, professional, and social backgrounds of each incoming class. An integral part of the first-year experience is assignment to project teams within the cohorts. These teams, usually five students, bring together a wealth of talent and experience across numerous industries, economies, and nationalities. Our students are encouraged to take full advantage of this opportunity to share experiences, support each other, expand the team’s capabilities, and extend this important future professional network.
Teamwork in Action
One unique aspect of the Texas MBA program is the number of entrepreneurs who teach in the program or who have companies locally and spend time sharing their experiences with students. [More]Lyn Graft (left), MBA 1995 & Ingrid Vanderveldt (right), MBA 1996
Online Collaboration
Collaborating online is a way of life for McCombs Students. The school runs a common operating environment modeled on the highest corporate standards. That means our students don’t have to worry about connectivity or software compatibility, they just plug in and get on with the business of working together. Just about anywhere you are within the McCombs School—private study rooms, the dining and lounge areas—you can connect to a virtual learning community that runs 24 hours a day. Direct network access is available for all students working from home. While the networking infrastructure supports the school’s mobile environment, the school also supports nearly 900 work-stations in seven computer labs, and an NT lab equipped with 142 state-of-the-art workstations. The McCombs Intranet portal ensures that students have last-minute information about classes, events, and recruiter schedules, plus quick access to data sources on campus and around the world.
Laptop Initiative
As part of its ongoing effort to keep pace with industry, the McCombs School runs one of the most advanced laptop programs of any academic institution in the country. A major goal is to keep students abreast of the latest in networking technology—and to increase their productivity. Through the SWAT Shop, our students also have direct access to a computer services team trained and equipped to solve their specific computing problems in-house and on the spot—allowing students to focus on fixing a business problem, not a broken laptop.
What they say
The laptop program eliminates the difficulties of working together with computers, encourages teamwork, allows cooperation between students at all levels, and builds the foundation level skills needed in business.Karen Hunt, MBA 01
