The Global Network for Advanced Management expands its offerings this fall with the launch of innovative digital courses designed to enable students from the network’s member schools, located in multiple countries, to work together as they study business issues with global dimensions.

The semester-long Global Network Courses will be comprised of faculty lectures streamed via the web and virtual project work by student teams spread around the world. IE Business School, a network member, will provide and manage the courses’ technology platform.

The courses will begin this fall with two experimental pilot offerings, both taught by Yale School of Management faculty: Analysis of Competition Law and Enforcement across Countries and Mobile Banking Opportunities Across Countries.

“These are both courses where students working in teams across geographies can make a big contribution to our understanding of what’s happening in these areas,” said David Bach, senior associate dean for executive MBA and global programs at Yale SOM.

For example, student teams in the competition law course will analyze real-time legal and enforcement issues in various countries in North America, South America, and Asia. Meanwhile, student teams in the mobile banking course will examine mobile banking practices around the world, seeking to identify potentially successful business models.

The new courses will equip students with cross-cultural skills that are increasingly important. “All of our graduates will be operating in a global marketplace and working with people from other parts of the world,” Bach said. “They need to understand how markets and organizational dynamics vary across countries.” The courses will also help students develop skills in virtual teamwork and collaboration across time zones, which Bach said many employers now seek in candidates.

Fiona Scott Morton, professor of economics at Yale, is co-teaching Analysis of Competition Law and Enforcement across Countries. Scott Morton, who served as the chief economist in the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division last year, said that competition law is also becoming increasingly relevant for companies working across borders.

“I’d like students to develop a clear understanding of the law and the economics underpinning it in their own jurisdictions and in other important jurisdictions,” Scott Morton said. “If you are going to run a firm that has any operations outside the country in which you’re living, then this is going to be an issue.”

The Global Network for Advanced Management is a consortium of 23 international business schools that connects faculty, students, and deans with their peers worldwide to improve business education in an increasingly globalized world. The network’s other academic programs include Global Network Weeks, in which member schools offer visiting students from peer schools a week of intensive study organized around a theme, company visits, and networking. Network schools also collaborate to develop joint case studies.