ECE - BUS495 Business Strategy Capstone

[julia12389]

This is for all of you who have questions about Excelsior’s BUS495 capstone class, I will write about my experience with the 8 wk accelerated class. It was by far the most challenging of all my credits, mainly due to the time commitment. The instructor told us to schedule a minimum of 40 hrs per week…..
Here was a typical week. (Monday – Sunday)
Monday – Required reading for the week 30-40 pages from the textbook and online resources. Work on your teams Business Strategy Game (BSG) for the upcoming years. (Wednesday/Sunday)
Tuesday – Meet with team members to Strategize, work on the (5) weekly 150 word discussions
Wednesday - Finalize team numbers for the Business Strategy Game and submit team results for the year. (Bonus: if there is capacity to purchase you want to be signed into the game within 10-12 minutes after the results are posted for the year and before your competition buys it first)
Thursday – 2 - 150 word discussion posts (in APA format) are due. Questions like: Explain your teams’ strategy for the BSG game and why. Alternatively, text related questions like, What was Company XXX social corporate responsibility. What could company XXX do better? In addition, work on upcoming BSG game year. (Sunday)
Friday – respond to 3 of your fellow classmates’ posts before Sunday. Work on BSG year.
Saturday – Take a Business component test. (There was a timed test each week about 10-15 questions, some of the subjects Quantitative Statistics, Accounting, Economics, Management, Marketing, etc.) Very difficult … but good news they were only 5% of your overall grade.
Sunday – make sure to respond to postings, (this is big, easy points if you just do it, you are penalized for not participating) Meet with BSG team to finalize year – due by 9pm. Again, be online at 9:10-12 to buy capacity.

The above was a “typical week” in addition there were the following assignments that were due in various weeks:

1. BSG game Quiz (there were 2 quizzes, the first easy the second very hard…. Make sure to print out ALL of the reports with the help screen guide, 50+ pages)
2. Business Resume – this is a very detailed resume in APA format there is a template but is still time consuming – this is also part of the final Integrated Business Portfolio (IBP)
3. DRAFTS of your IBP - Learning Statements – there were 2 of these draft assignments -draft learning statements submitted for feedback (and graded) as part of the final Integrated Business Portfolio.
4. 3-Year Strategic Plan in BSG – this is due around year 15. Again there is a template within the BSG game, not too difficult but time consuming and team collaboration is required
5. Draft Company Analysis.. ours was on the Starbucks company, 12 pages with Cover, Title Page, in APA format and due around week 4, final due in week 7 (our instructor provided examples of prior student papers)
6. Final Company Analysis.. refer to 5 above .. due in week 7
7. BSG – Final Presentation – again there is a template but it is a 15 minute RECORDED power point presentation of all of your years strategy and your results. (you need to coordinate with team members)
8. FINAL of Integrated Business Portfolio – this is a learning statement of your resume, entire business components and papers. (between 40-80 pages) (again our instructor provided examples of prior students)
9. Specific Business Portfolio – The topic can be on anyone of the Business Degrees, (Example: Business, Human Resource Management, Economics, Accounting, etc). All of the same learning statement questions with answers specific to the degree component, and what you have learned. (10-30 pages)
10. BSG – Business Strategy Game – peer evaluations. (easy questions, tip: rate yourself first)
I can honestly say after the first week of assignments I was ready to drop this class… it is very overwhelming the first couple of weeks with all the assignments due AND trying to learn the BSG game.
The Business Strategy Game (BSG) is a shoe company that you run, (either by yourself or with team members) and compete with your fellow classmates as well as other College classes in the world. As a team you will decide the price of shoes in the internet market, in 4 different regions (Africa, North America, Europe, Latin America), wholesale price and in the private label. You will decide how much to spend on training, advertisement, incentives, social responsibilities, celebrities, etc. You are running a business. In addition, there are financial statements to read and understand. It is very overwhelming, and you have one week of practice rounds…. It is 40% of your grade…. You want to do well.
Our instructor allowed us to choose either to be on an assigned team or to go it alone, I chose to be on a team or it worked well. The advantage was that we split our assignments, one was in charge of submitting the game numbers, one prepared the draft 3-year strategic plan, and another prepared the draft presentation. Some downfalls …we had a teammate in NY, AZ and NV and had to work around different time zones. My advice, if you do not have the time to coordinate with team members, or have strong opinions, or can only coordinate at midnight. I would do it alone.
Our BSG results… 3 of us (all women..) and we stayed in the top the entire game. We ended the game in 4th place, but placed #1 worldwide in our(ROE) Return of Equity. In our class, we tied for 1st once and were in 2nd or 3rd place most of the game but we failed to increase our plant capacity early in the game and the other teams were able to sell more shoes than we were were in the last year. .
The best advice that I can give on the BSG game is to find, print, read and study the “Players Guide” somewhere, somehow before your class begins. This is the 30 page manually that tells you how to play the game. There just is not enough time to learn it before it begins. As our instructor said the first week, “there is a steep learning curve.” Additionally, buy capacity..Increase your plant size. Note: If your increases are less than 500 you do not need board of director justification. Just do it early trust me!!
Honestly, after you get into the groove …around week 3 you realize you can do this… stick with it, do not get discouraged with the Quizzes, and make sure to post your required posts. (This is 500 points per week… if you just do it) Have fun with the game, and it goes fast.
On a side note, I believe the 12wk course has 2 research papers, the 8wk only had one. Not positive.. Good Luck..
Oh by the way, I ended with an A. Yay!!!!

[dcan]

Holy cow, this sounds significantly more in-depth than the equivalent BUS-421 Business Strategy Capstone at TESC. I completed that one this past Spring. I should say "more in-depth" because our course did not include the game, even though the text discussed it. The business analysis part of the course, to me, was pretty intense. But then, not having a business background personally, and wanting to turn in "A+" material at all times, I may have been at a disadvantage.

Our course amounted to the following, for comparison with Excelsior's class and for anyone who is interested in knowing what the TESC business capstone is like.

Each week we had to read about 50+ pages from the text and discuss topics in the class discussion forums. Discussions were weak at best. Despite TESC's explicit policy against "good job" and "I agree" posts that was 90% of the discussions. The other 10% was rearranged words from the post being commented upon. It was frankly nauseating to see the caliber of discussion that was tolerated in this class. For example, I and a few others would write detailed posts on the topic given (e.g. is it ethical to pay the local police in a foreign country for extra protection, etc.) and comments would roll in saying "Yes I agree with you that [insert statement I or another poster made] and also that [insert another statement that we made], because [insert a few keywords from the text with no real thought put into it]."

(I should state emphatically this was not everyone, but it was a significant amount of discussion, and in fact it was the culmination of a pattern I saw in my business courses throughout my time in that track at TESC. Comparing that with my computer science courses the discussions are significantly better on the CS side, lots more interaction and back-and-forth asking and teaching going on.)

Also each week (sometimes two weeks) we had a paper due. This was a typical five-pager (I think they actually said no more than five pages if I remember correctly) and it was always based on a case study from the back of the book. The case studies averaged about 30 pages each, and that was on top of the 50+ for the 2 chapters we typically had to read each week. For the case study we had to answer specific questions, and there was always one question that required a thorough analysis of the financial statements in the case study, e.g. not just balance sheets and cash flow but also sales by region, projections, purchase options, etc. I found out early on the instructor wanted "more pictures" so the papers had to include charts, graphs, etc. Every paper was APA format.

The final paper was only 10 pages but it was (oddly) mandated to be single-spaced, so really think of it as 20 pages as a "normal" college paper. My final paper was 11 pages long including a 1 page executive summary and 2 pages of references (I had 20 of them). It was written as a recommendation to the CEO whether or not to move into a major foreign market or to withdraw. It included a Five Forces analysis, strategic group map, and financial analysis based on publicly-available financial records from competitors. I was also able to recommend getting the US and foreign government involved in what appeared to be rampant securities fraud by a main competitor, backed up by analyses from several financial and business analysts online. Get the government to beat them up, then offer incentives for their customers to switch.

I should add, all work was individual; there were no team projects like the course at Excelsior.

Like I said, the course was intense to me partly because I chose to put so much work into it to keep my GPA high. Part of that was because I was seriously considering switching to computer science (which I have since done) and wanted to pad my GPA as much as possible in case I ran into snags later on. I did the same in the law class, both for GPA and also because I was insanely interested in the law anyway. For those who were content making "me too" posts (apparently a successful strategy for them to at least get a C all the way up to this class) they may have turned in papers with less analysis and research, and maybe the instructor passed them without any problem. If so then the class, frankly, is not that hard and just proves the adage "you get out what you put into it." Though the instructor did beat me up the week before the class when I turned in a slip-shod paper because I was spending time on my final, and he gave me an 85 saying "overall not your best work". So I don't know how much he beat other people up, so your mileage may vary.

Hope this helps someone else compare the two courses.