Oxford Brookes Global MBA student, Sarah Phibbs is the Director of Research4Life Publisher Partnerships STM.
Research4Life provides institutions in low-and middle-income countries with online access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content. The non-profit organisation aims to improve teaching, research and policymaking in health, agriculture, the environment and other life, physical and social sciences.
I was establishing my consulting business so wanted to consolidate my business and leadership knowledge learned ‘on the job’, grounding my experience in theoretical frameworks and models. The global programme appealed to me, interacting with people from all over the world with a diversity of industry backgrounds and ideas.
How have you found the experience studying on the programme and the balancing of your time spent between work and study?
It’s a juggle! You have to be pretty disciplined during term time to keep on top of the reading and break down longer pieces of work into segments. Seminar engagement provides the building blocks for seminar assessments, so everything contributes to your final mark.
It’s been great fun meeting and interacting with people from different perspectives and backgrounds, from start-up entrepreneurs to accountants and doctors. Intensive online sessions were a great opportunity to learn together in groups, supplemented by WhatsApp groups for support during high stress moments and information sharing.
What has the standard of teaching been like on the programme? Please also comment on the blended modes of study (virtual/face-to-face)
All online modules involved engaging seminars face to face online with questions for us to research and answer individually and debate together. Critical modules were available in-person on campus enabling greater connection with tutors and more social engagement at lunchtimes and in the evenings. Accounting and Finance would have been very difficult for me had it not been in person, talking through approaches and recapping when stuck.
Please tell us about your experience accessing the support network and learning resources at Oxford Brookes University?
All course materials were available online with supplementary books and journals available through the library. The librarians were incredibly helpful, providing guidance on access to materials and tools to help with building your research skills. Nvivo training online was also critical in enabling qualitative data analysis for my final capstone project.
All my project work has focused on my non-profit organisation Research4Life, to help tackle the challenge of equity for lower and middle income country researchers. It’s been a privilege to focus my MBA on potential transformative changes to enable greater global knowledge exchange between the global north and south.