Harvard's full-time MBA lasts for two years, and all the compulsory courses in the first academic year are taught together and use the same classroom. In the classroom, each case is completed through the discussion between the professor and the whole class, and about 800 cases will be used in the whole learning career. Students must carefully read and analyze each case before class, and express their own analysis and views on the case in class discussion. The process of class discussion is controlled by the professor, trying to make the whole class reach an agreement to some extent, or at least draw some conclusions that can be clarified by several cases themselves.

Most courses are started by a professor who randomly asks a classmate to make an opening speech. This classmate will spend 5- 10 minutes summarizing several key points in the case, providing an analytical framework for understanding the case and proposing an action plan to solve the problems described in the case. Next, he may have to refute other students' accusations of his speech. The score of his speech depends largely on the reaction of other students. No matter how pertinent the speech is, whether it is pure nonsense or not, as long as you speak it, you can get class participation points, and class participation points often account for as much as 50% of the final score of each course. Therefore, every student strives for as many opportunities as possible to participate in the classroom, and classroom discussions are often full of gunpowder. But there is a principle, that is, others have said a point first, and you can't say the same point again, otherwise it is a waste of time and disrespect for others.