Excelsior Business Strategy 495

[bkahuna]

Hello All,

I just completed this class.

Overall I had a good experience in the course, with the outstanding Professor Schuetz. I would recommend him highly if you have a choice of instructors when enrolling in the class.

As I mentioned above the grade weights have changed:
Case Outline : 15% of total grade

Consists of a 4-5 slide narrated powerpoint and a two page outline of the case study in APA format. Due Week 8

Case Analysis : 30%

APA format paper consisting of analysis data along with key result areas, recommendations and conclusion. Due Week 15

Chapter Quizzes : 25%

Weekly 20 question exam (untimed, but only one attempt allowed) covering the chapter reading. You do not have access to the chapter quiz until Monday, and must complete it by Sunday night. This is different from the previous posts, again you get access to one a week, and the capstone exam in week 15.

Capstone Exam: 5%

A broad 3 hour timed exam covering these topics, roughly 10 questions per.
Financial Accounting
Managerial Accounting
Economics
Management
Quantitative business analysis (statistics)
Information Systems
Finance
Marketing
Legal and Social Environment

Participation Online : 25%

A posting is required every week answering follow up questions to the chapter reading. Then a follow up answer is expected after the instructor reviews your posting, and another question or follow up is required to a posting by another class member. All citations needed to be APA format.

An additional posting is required every two weeks answering follow up questions to the case study reading, with the same principle, initial post, follow up to the instructor, follow up to classmates. All citations needed to be APA format.

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I did well in this class, but this was the only class I had left and had nothing else going on academically so I put 100% focus in. You know that kid in the class you hate because the work is so over the top? I think that was me this time.

I dont know if you have taken webCT courses (straighterline would be an example), but the discussion posting software is not good. I found myself going into the HTML editor for every post, doing some color coding and posting images of charts and graphs. I believe only two other students posted a chart or graph for the entire course in the discussion forums and my postings had one nearly every week. I do think that it went a long way with the others in the class and the professor to have it neatly organized every week.

I ended up with a 98% in the class, largely due to the capstone exam, and I was able to get a 88% on that in just over two hours. I think if i would have reviewed the answers again I could have done better, I had lots of time left.

The professor was excellent, but a lot of this course is about class participation so its going to depend on who takes the class. I had a few other students who were good that made the experience positive, and many from overseas who had difficulty with communication.

We were also told that Excelsior judges attendance based on the forum participation and if you skipped weeks that you would be counted as absent and after 3 in a row you would be dropped. So keep that in mind. Being a CLEP/DSST advocate it was challenging to have a 15 week marathon class, but I got through it and did quite well.

Also the text, yes its expensive, and yes you need the latest version. Still, though it was printed in 2011 (its August 2011 now), the material was probably dated the second the book was published. Many of the dicussions and sources for the case were not the text. Its also all in black and white so its a difficult read compared to some other texts.

Best of luck to anyone else!