The purpose of this paper is to share experiences from and reflections on the use of video case studies in an international online cultural management programme. To do so, the paper pursues a mixed methods approach, combining an online survey amongst students and group interviews to better understand the elements from the survey. Our results indicate that video case studies can provide a context-rich online learning environment for cultural managers. For this purpose content-related, structural and emotional layers should be closely aligned which can be challenging because there are conflicting tensions to balance within these layers. Furthermore, video case studies can help to bridge the gap between theory and practice. However, an exact coordination between these areas faces the difficulty that both areas operate with their own logic. Perspectives for further development exist in comparative case studies and closely coordinated collaboration of cooperation partners.