Excelsior Business Strategy 495

[joel66]

Yup, I'm also taking Bus 495 with prof. Sherman. I had all of the quizzes done within the first two weeks and all forum posts done in four weeks. Some of the responses he made caused me to get some brain cramps. I agree on the final writing assignment, I'm hoping to get this done soon, but it's possible to get everything completed 4 to 6 weeks, if you put a lot of effort into this. That finally Capstone exam was tough! I haven't done some of the topics like statistics and macroeconomics in awhile, but was able to get 77%. I wasn't to disappointed because 77% is only 3 points and if you get 90-100% you only get 5 points.

Just finished the course as well with an A. It is very straightforward and I'd say that you can definately finish the course ahead of schedule. The quizzes are all available on the first day of the course. As said they all come directly from the text book. Some of them are a little tricky in their wording. If you use ALL of the online content available for each chapter you will 100% on the quizzes. That's half of the grade. I had Professor Sherman so some of these comments may not apply to a different instructor. For online participation I tried to start one thread per chapter in either the chapter discussion or the case instruction. For our class it seemd to be important that you researched the subject using sources other than the textbook (and actually did reseach, not just use comments like "I think..." - the discussions about executive pay were unreal - especially considering this is a business course and, I don't know, I'm kinda taking this track because I'd like to be one someday...) From the people signed up for case studies I estimated that there were about 10 people in our section so I tried to keep my comments at about 10% of the total. I admit I overthought the whole thing.

The Case Analysis... This, as stated, seems to be the focus of the course. I found very little support for this and all of the comments were very vague. I found some rubrics from other courses and some pointers but nothing really solid. I finally found an actual case analysis done by some grad students (yes a group project for Masters level students...) that I used as a model. Again overkill I'm sure but was able to secure 29/30. As I was putting away all of my material I found what is probably a perfect structure for this course. It's in the Wheelen Hunger "Strategic Management and Business Policy" text. I'm sure that you could get any version of that text but it's worth it for the case analysis alone. Follow that structure and you'd be set. For our section it was important to show that not only was the case researched but the concepts as well.

Capstone exam... Yeah what's already been mentioned. Get out your Accounting books and brush up. Statistics, Finance a little law. Everything seemed to be appropriately taken from the business core requirements. There is no outline for the exam but if you went through the instantcert packs for those courses you'd be pretty well covered. A lot of the questions seemed hard but came down to knowing one simple concept.

Good luck and don't be afraid.