Master of Business Administration with Artificial Intelligence (MBA)

The Cardiff MBA with Artificial Intelligence is structured around a series of six challenge-focused modules, based on cross-functional and action-based scenarios typically found in the workplace. These may include Responsible Leadership, Digital Transformation and The Future of Work.

The learning required to engage with the challenges is experienced in immersive blocks designed to stimulate your curiosity, inform your process of enquiry and strengthen the application of your learning.

Core Modules for Year One

• Global Challenges and Strategic Decision-Making
• People Perspectives
• Financial and Business Analytics
• Creativity, Innovation and Enterprise
• The Accelerator Project
• Leading Change and Transforming Futures
• Leadership Development Programme
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Techniques and Applications

How will I be Assessed?

The block programme structure provides plenty of opportunities for you to reflect on your learning and development informally. Short knowledge/skill review activities are built into each module to help you check your progress and improve your approach to learning. This will build your confidence and enhance your approach to formal assessment tasks.

Realistic work problems form the basis of formal module assessments. You will be expected to show extended academic reflection on each task, and also adopt typical business formats to present your findings, including oral presentations, and written reports. Assessment tasks require you to work individually and as part of a team, just as you would in the workplace.

All formal assessments are completed within each module block. This enables more in-depth consolidation and application required for successful performance in assessment tasks based on the complex work undertaken by business leaders. It also reflects realistic workplace timescales for the completion of tasks.

What Skills Will I Practise and Develop?

The Learning Outcomes for this Programme describe what you will be able to do as a result of your study at Cardiff University. They will help you to understand what is expected of you.

The Learning Outcomes for this Programme can be found below:

Knowledge & Understanding

On successful completion of the programme you will be able to:

• Draw on discipline-based knowledge and management experience to design integrated solutions to complex organisational problems
• Critically evaluate current management frameworks, models, debates and evidence and integrate them with practice
• Critically evaluate contrasting research and consultancy skills for engaging with multi-faceted business problems
• Analyse the complex environmental context that informs strategic decision-making in organisations and practice
• Demonstrate a holistic awareness of challenges faced by businesses in making both an economic and social contribution
• Critically evaluate the risks and opportunities of harnessing developments in artificial intelligence within a new or existing business
• Analyse and select relevant tools, technologies and algorithms for a particular domain or business area

Intellectual Skills

On successful completion of the programme you will be able to:

• Find and discriminate between competing sources of research and consulting evidence
• Analyse methods for generating primary data and management information
• Critically analyse and synthesise contrasting perspectives and their supporting evidence
• Use standard software tools and libraries to analyse data
• Integrate theory and diverse workplace experiences
• Develop compelling arguments to support viable and creative plans of action to convince and brief a range of audiences

Professional Practical Skills

On successful completion of the programme you will be able to:

• Evaluate the practical applications of theory and practice to generate practice-based solutions to unstructured problems
• Demonstrate proactivity and the ability to take the initiative
• Demonstrate responsible and ethical leadership
• Identify and address personal and professional development needs
• Develop credible methods for gathering primary data
• An ability to make decisions in challenging situations
• Work effectively in a leadership team

Transferable/Key Skills

On successful completion of the programme you will be able to:

• Solve problems creatively
• Communicate to diverse audiences through a range of media
• Demonstrate self-reflection and self-awareness
• Work independently and collaboratively
• Use digital technology
• Manage self and others

At Cardiff Business School, you’ll receive a career-changing MBA education from world-leading academics who have different points of view. They’ll challenge your thinking as you consider the world of business from a range of alternative perspectives.

The Cardiff MBA is designed with your future in mind. You’ll benefit from our Career Advantage Service (CAS), which gives you access to the knowledge and expertise of a career consultant and coach for personalised professional development.

Alongside the CAS, a bespoke, wrap-around Leadership Development Programme will help you assess your leadership capability, develop a personal development path and build key leadership skills.

We’ve developed relationships that range from the largest multinationals to the smallest micro-businesses, and include a wide variety of social enterprises and cooperatives. We use these networks to deliver value for our students through:

• Real-world case studies and insights
• Collaboration with our Public Value Entrepreneurs in Residence
• Guest lectures
• Field trips and workshops.

Completing this wide-ranging and varied learning experience will enable you to apply for more senior positions or seek a transformative career change.

This programme is designed for those with existing work experience. Successful completion of the programme will enable you to apply for more senior positions or seek a transformative career change.

How will I be Taught?

An active learning approach is embedded in the Cardiff MBA with Artificial Intelligence. We believe that effective learning is founded on two things – your involvement in diverse and challenging experiences, and the way you make sense of those experiences, both individually and with others. A team that includes academics from multiple disciplines, and practitioners representing a range of functions and sectors will facilitate each module. This will reflect workplace practice and encourage the cross-fertilisation of different perspectives.

You will find that each block of learning involves a wide variety of activities including company visits, industry speakers, time-limited challenges, role-play, and simulations. These are all designed to reconsider your existing understanding and to explore issues from different perspectives. The diverse backgrounds within the student cohort make a valuable contribution here.

We will help you to enhance your higher-order reflective skills, including observation, analysis, and synthesis to develop comprehensive conclusions about these experiences.

We will also encourage you to reflect collaboratively with peers, academics and practitioners to challenge your existing knowledge structures, assumptions, values and skills. This will also enable you to negotiate and build new insights into the nature of leadership and business practice and develop creative responses to business problems.

You will have opportunities to integrate and apply new understandings, together with skills from the Leadership Development workshops, in practical tasks embedded in each learning block, and formal coursework challenges around which each module is designed.