Excelsior Business Strategy 495

[pixaloop]

People have taken and completed the class. So, they've pretty much verified it, confirmed, assured it.

[bkahuna]

Do you HAVE to pass the capstone exam (5%) in order to pass the class???

Thanks

I dont think you have to "Pass", but you must take it or you will not be given a grade for the class. I just took the class and thats what was printed in the syllabus.

[perriquit]

I got the older version of the book from Amazon, do you guys think that I could make it with it?
I am also wondering as a previous poster if the Capstone exam is not for extra credit anymore. I am going to take the 8 week class in November and I want to make sure I can use the old book.. I am sure the class is going to be very intense but I am targeting a B.. I don't want to over stress about it and I can't wait to start the new year with a BS as a late Christmas reward..

[pixaloop]

Just completed this class. Got an A in it but you'll need to earn it with. Here are my observations.

The course requires plenty of work out of you. On a weekly basis, the minimum required is to read a chapter, answer the weekly questions on the discussion board, take a quiz on the chapter and reply to at least 2 other students posts. This is the bare minimum you need to do every week. Additionally, you'll need to submit your case outline on week 10 and submit your final case study by the last day.

The case outline requires audio to accompany the PowerPoint presentation you'll be submitting with the outline. It's not as bad as I thought but its additional work for that week.

The readings are not that bad, there's just a constant amount of it.

I'm employed full time and took this class alongside Operations Management, an XML class and Information literacy equivalent class. In retrospect, I should have not have taken them all at once but I was making a big push to finish. I did well in all my classes so I can't say other classes suffered but I certainly was stressed every week this semester. So in that regard, it sucked.

I'd recommend taking as few classes concurrently with this one if you can. Just makes like easier. I still feel kind of weird thinking I need to post something, somewhere.

Just glad it's over. One class left and I'm done.

BTW, rent the book if you can. I got a great deal at about $26 for the semester from knetbooks. That's what I got it for at the time.
Here's the book info: Strategic Management

Get Noodletools if you can, it helped keep my postings, and assignments organized. Thanks to bkahuna for that tip.

[jackbanta]

I'd just like to add a few things about this class.

To begin with, the discussion posts were a joke. I mean, they wouldn't have been bad as a homework assignment, but they didn't really seem to spur any discussion. The questions were designed to pretty much regurgitate what you read in the book. A lot of "what's the definition of this?". At first, I put a lot of time into them, trying to come up with a creative angle, but in my section the instructor was pretty much MIA the whole class, so about halfway through I stopped putting in the same amount of effort. Didn't hurt my grade any, I only missed 1 point on the discussions the whole time and that was because I only replied to one person one week instead of two. It was really hard for me to force myself to reply to people sometimes because what they were saying was basically just out of the book. Basically, I don't think the format made any sense. Even the "case study" topic questions were written just to see if you had read the "case study" in the book. I was hoping for an upper level business strategy class that it would involve some more free thinking, but that was beyond the scope of the class, apparently.

The weekly quizzes were easy, if poorly written on occasion. 20 questions (except one week when it was only 10... weird), unlimited time. If you had the chapter notes pdf pulled up while doing them, you could quickly reference most of the answers.

The capstone test was really hard, I thought. It wasn't based on the course AT ALL. It really was a combination of all the business courses and pretty obscure at times too. If I had my accounting book out when I was taking it, I probably would have done better, as the depth of those questions threw me (and that was the first section too). I only ended up getting an 85 on it and taking up almost the full two hours. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't decided to take it when I did. I took it a week before the last week on more or less a whim... if I had spent a little bit of time preparing, I probably could have broken 90 and gotten all 5 points for the test, but oh well. I still got an A in the course.

The only part of the course that I really felt was worthwhile was the case analysis. It was actually pretty fun researching a company and writing up an analysis for it. The rest of the class seemed like a poorly designed review of other business courses and the text was pretty awfully written as well. For the only class I ever took at Excelsior, it didn't exactly leaving me wanting to take more classes with them. Some of my classmates seemed to feel the same way as well, with one women who had taken more courses at Excelsior and other classes elsewhere saying it was the worst class she'd ever taken.

Rumor is that they're changing the format soon, which is good.

[rsm1112]

This class has definitely changed and appears a good bit harder. There are no more open book quizzes except the 2 that relate to the business simulation game that you are playing.

We are broken into teams, and 28% of the total grade is based on the outcome of a business simulation computer game. Makes me very, very nervous to have whether i pass or fail based on the results of a video game. Anyone else in this class?



The new format is:

Grade Weights:

Activity/Assessment


% of final grade

Simulation
Quiz 1 (1%)
Quiz 2 (2%)
Strategic Plan (4%)
Comprehensive Report (4%)
Company Performance (28%)
Peer Evaluation (1%)
40%

Case Studies


30%

Integrated Business Portfolio


10%

Final Capstone Exam


5%

Participation


15%

Total


100%