I completed this course a couple of weeks ago and received 964 out of 1000 points which equates to an “A”. I lost all of my points on two questions on Exam 3, which I’ll cover in small detail below.
Thanks to the posts in this thread, I was able to complete this class within two months. Within those two months I probably spent about one month actually working on the class—but I stopped to study for other tests and other life interruptions, so two months worked out to be pretty comfortable for me. There is a lot of great information in this thread and it all should be read before attempting the course. I’m going to add some information in this post to help people get past a few hurdles where I spent a little extra time figuring things out. Hopefully, this will allow you to be even more efficient when completing this course. To be clear, my goal was to be as efficient as possible and finish the course quickly with a good grade. I did not have any specific interest in the material, though I didn’t dislike it, but I was not trying to learn as much as I was trying to finish.
First, let’s look at the textbook. I used the eighth edition with CD. The professor told me that I could use the 7th edition, which is MUCH cheaper, but gary came through with a cheap 8th edition for me. The professor indicated that it might be hard to match up page numbers with the syllabus if I used an earlier edition and that dissuaded me. Now that I’ve completed the course, I don’t believe that would have been a problem. The vast majority of information comes from the syllabus and the lecture notes and powerpoints on his website. You mostly need the book to find examples and acquire more thorough explanations and I would bet that would not be hard to do—particularly because I didn’t do a lot of recommended reading. Instead, I just used the index to get straight to what I needed.
Similarly, I don’t recall using anything off the CD except for the Excel OM plug-in—which I used A LOT. You can download a copy of that below:
Excel OM Software
To be clear, there is a lot of good info on the CD—including a program called POM Windows—however I didn’t use any of it. I frequently checked POM Windows when looking for software to complete a problem, but I don’t think I actually used it on any problem. I say “think” because there is a possibility that I used it somewhere along the way and don’t recall—but if I did it was only once or twice—and I don’t really think I did.
So—now you know that you can get a cheap early edition of the textbook and skip the CD if you can download the Excel OM program. You don’t need great Excel knowledge (as in programming formulas, etc.) to use it to complete this course—but you should be generally comfortable with it.
I filled out the PDF application for the course and submitted it entirely on line. I used some software I have at work to fill it out. It required a signature, but I just used a signature-looking font and it worked. You could also print it out, fill it out and scan it back to them—but I tried to do everything I possibly could electronically.
I would advise you to read through the syllabus you’ll receive (see earlier posts) along with all the information on Professor Billington’s website related to this course. You’ll see where you’ll likely need additional info and what that info is. Then, when you get stuck, you’ll recall having seen something about that and you can go back and look it up.
The course includes 18 required Application Exercises (“AE’s”) and four required exams. There are also unrequired, ungraded homework assignments. I didn’t complete any of the homework assignments.
Each group of AE’s is related to one of the exams. I submitted my work by grouping the AE’s into one document and then requesting an exam. In other words, I completed AE’s 1-6 and then requested Exam 1. I completed and returned Exam 1 and then completed AE’s 7-14 (that stretch is a killer) and then requested Exam 2. From there, I just completed AE’s 15-18 and was done with the AE’s. After the first exam, he would just automatically send me the related exams when he returned my email with my AE grades. I received full credit on all AE’s. I then completed Exams 3 & 4 in one marathon 5-hour middle of the night session. I submitted everything via email and he was VERY responsive throughout the course.
I've attached a document detailing my approach to the AE's and the exams--including the software I used for each problem. I'll attach some links to software and information below as well so you can download it when you're ready to get to work.
Overall, I was very happy I took this course and very grateful that auminer took the time to get a lot of this info down and start this thread. I would strongly urge anyone to consider this as opposed to the TECEP exam. This course does not require a lot of time and is very well run. You could easily be studying for a couple of CLEP or DSST exams while completing the assignments for this course and not short-change either. If you have any questions, please feel free to post here or send me a PM. Thanks.
Pareto Chart Template for Excel
Fishbone Chart Template for Excel
Info on creating flow charts in Excel
Excel OM Software