By Joanne Meier and Lauren Wallace
The Darden School extends its thought leadership reach beyond its classroom walls by using online capabilities in several ways. Darden’s executive MBA format includes synchronous distance sessions, an asynchronous course in Business Fundamentals, and learning team meetings between residencies. Darden’s Executive Education also delivers online solutions including hybrid courses with digital program materials, on-demand webinars, and customized short online courses. An online four-course Specialization in Design Thinking and Innovation is also available through Darden Executive Education.
More than 1.1 million people have taken advantage of Darden’s Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) since their launch in 2013. These MOOCs—including course offerings in strategy, design thinking and innovation, leadership and management, marketing, and more—are free self-study courses available to anyone, on-demand from anywhere around the world led by the same top-ranked faculty that reside in Virginia. The popularity and value of the courses continues to grow. Darden’s MOOC courses had over 45,000 enrollments in the first quarter this year, and enjoy some of the highest participation rates of business courses on the Coursera platform.
Online courses and solutions have furthered the global impact of Darden around the world. In early 2016, Darden partnered with online course platform Coursera and Distance Education for Africa to pilot a program to award scholarships to online learners to take a series of five business strategy MOOCs , resulting in the completion of a specialization certificate. 103 business professionals across the African continent participated.
Here are some comments about the truly global Darden experience:
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Yael, good morning, My name is Jáed Toledo and I work in a German international bank as Strategic Project Manager. Your classes was very useful, especially 4.4 (Agile, Scrum and Kanban – @~0:11:10). Some of my sponsors (and even the CEO) were recently ‘seduced’ by the word ‘agile’, without knowing the context exactly and that our corporation – really – does not fit the ‘living in the moment culture’ (maybe for improve existing operations, but not for project management). Your approach regarding where this methodology is applicable (and where it is not) was very useful to help me to explain to them the pros and cons (the ‘price’) of Agile. Very best and warm regards from Brazil,
Jáed Toledo
Brazil
NEW MODELS OF BUSINESS IN SOCIETY
My name is Munyaradzi Mushato from Zimbabwe and i specialise in Human Resources and Business Strategy consulting, targeting mainly start-ups and SMEs.
I am very happy to write this short note of appreciation to the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business , particularly to Professor Edward. R. Freeman, for the insightful and thought-provoking course on New Models of doing business in society. The course has changed and transformed my perception of business from perceiving business as a source of all societal ills to a perspective that business can be a source of true and sustainable prosperity for society as a whole. I learnt a lot of exciting new concepts that are very practical : Social Entrepreneurship, conscious Capitalism and many more which I had never heard about! Thank you very much. I hope to be able to utilise the knowledge in my efforts to make the world a better place to live, particularly through converting pain points into innovative business-based solutions to problems in society.
Much appreciated Professor Freeman and Darden School of Business, keep it up.
