Wharton Global Modular Courses, launched as part of the curriculum redesign, are an innovative way to deliver global, experience-based learning. Global Modular Courses (GMCs) are offered in an intensive workshop format over three to seven days. Students understand applicable business opportunities and practice through project- and team-based immersive learning, in a geographic location relevant to the subject matter during school breaks. Each year since 2010, eight to 13 courses are offered in Brazil, China, India, Israel, Italy, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
GMCs expose students to a unique combination of local immersion, course concepts and emerging business issues. The topics and locations of these give students first-hand exposure to business challenges and opportunities in regions undergoing rapid change — for example, energy and infrastructure in Brazil, global supply chain management in China, and marketing in emerging economies such as India and China. In addition, the GMCs enable students to work across degree programs (undergraduate, full-time MBA and WEMBA) and schools (with students from host institutions). Planning for these courses requires the development of new teaching materials, access to live cases from the region, and the creation of a new, intensive learning format.
Each year about 300 Wharton students — undergraduates, MBAs, and executive MBAS — enroll in these courses. The diversity of the student body coming from Wharton’s programs, which normally don’t have many opportunities to interact with one another on campus, as well as each course’s ties to a local partner university, and the opportunity to bring to the classroom prominent leaders working in these regions, made GMCs extremely dynamic and exciting learning experiences for everyone involved.
