Archive for 'Online MBA' Category

Doing well at GMAT

Before getting into MBA school, you must take the GMAT. Studying for your GMAT is rather difficult. Because of the nature of the test, the only way to prepare is to practice the kind of problems they include. Especially for the numeracy parts you simply have to go over and over questions until you become used to the problem-solving techniques needed to do them well.

The literacy tests are a little different in that they depend on your knowledge of the language that you are to study in – and usually for much of the business world this is English. If this is not your first language, this part becomes that much more difficult; the expected standard for the GMAT is fairly high. However it’s not impossible, and many of my acquaintances whose first language is not English have managed to score highly in their GMAT.

Product Differentiation

I started to look closely at Information Systems MBAs today. I’m working in conjunction with a university that is setting up a professional Masters degree in Technology Management and looking at others offering similar degrees.

Some of the MBAs I’ve looked at were clear in focus but gave a generalist background that would be a good addition for business administrators, but not so focused on technology. Others were doing more what we were doing.

Bottom line: if you are seeking a program that focuses on information systems and technology, make sure the core of the program does just that.

Mark Your Own

I’ve recently spent some time online working on a case study with a group of lecturers. The case study involves looking at group work in MBA programs — the big problem we have been wrestling with is how to assess group work.

We came up with a system that is as likely to work as any other. Each member of the group has to do an assessment of the work done in the group, including their own. They have to justify marks and comment on each member’s work using a five-criteria marking system.

Instructors are to have a panel interview with each student, discussing their progress and their mark allocation. We think that because they will have to defend their assessments face-to-face, it will help students work out with some objectivity on their own and other people’s performance.

Online Referencing

For many people who are studying an MBA online, receiving lectures and program materials electronically is an enormous benefit. It means you can read a lecture as many times as you need to absorb it – something that is never available if you are in a classroom. You do not need to concentrate on taking notes, and therefore you can work through the material, supplementing it with your own research.

In fact online study is in many ways a very different activity from studying in the classroom. You need to apply discipline to do it well, but on the other hand you have materials to hand at the times at which you study best. Lectures become just one of the many resources you have to hand to do your work well.

For me, the largest benefit of working online is that it is largely self documenting, and therefore I can reference almost all of my past study activities and communication with professors and peers. This, I have found, is invaluable.

Family Benefits

MBAs may make your family healthier! Former research done in New Zealand by Massey University shows that families of MBA graduates tend to be better educated and have fewer health problems than families of high school graduates or even of people with Bachelor degrees.

So gaining an MBA is not only a way of building a more satisfying and rewarding career for yourself, it can have real benefits for your family as well.

Social Saturdays

Oh great, the weekend. For me, the weekend is almost sacred, and I really try not to work or even study then. But if you are studying an online MBA, you’re going to have to face the fact that you need to study on weekends.

A colleague of mine is studying an online MBA at the moment, but he tells me that for him it has become more fun than he thought. A group of students have decided to study in tandem, and so they start the weekend off with a Saturday morning online chat, talking about what they’ve done during the week and any salient points that have arisen. Usually Saturday is the day to concentrate on group work projects, and he tells me that it’s usual for him to not only chat online, but also to make several phone calls and sometimes meet up with his group to work together.

This social activity lifts the whole program for him, and as it’s largely self-directed, it has grown and developed as the program has progressed. He now looks forward to Saturday mornings. Apparently the group is now discussing how they will stay in touch when they’ve finished their MBA program.

Knowledge Management

This discussion about knowledge workers is really in the center of my thoughts at the moment. In New Zealand, as in many other countries, there is much talk about the “knowledge economy” and how this idea affects how we work within organizations.

There is little doubt that we need to think carefully about how this shift affects the management function, and, as Failing Economist says, about the ownership of organizations. However, many Management Schools are still teaching the traditional models of organization and management.

This discussion is beginning to be opened up in management schools, and no doubt it will affect some thinking — which will be reflected in MBA programs. I think there is little doubt that what we see at the moment is just the beginning of a major change in the way we view organizations, and possibly in business thinking as a whole.

Online assessment for MBAs

Many of the projects that MBA students work on during their programs are group work projects, as they simulate real life situations (in the business world, few people work outside teams). However there are problems in assessing an individual’s contribution to a project. It can be very difficult to work out who has done what, and to what standard, when you are presented with a total project.

However, one way of dealing with this when you are teaching MBA courses is to give the problem to the students. They have to either work out how to identify individual contributions to the project or to be confident that there was equal effort and equal talent in each part of the whole.

Just another management dilemma.

Chinese MBA

I’m in conversation with a Chinese university about the possibility of offering a joint degree program in Business and Information Systems. They are looking to do this as a platform for the development of a joint MBA.

There are some really interesting problems associated with joint programs. Personally I prefer to work with single programs, because those working in them are totally familiar with them. On the other hand,  in joint programs those maintaining programs are often not the ones who developed them, which means they might not totally understand what they are teaching. When you bring in a mix of cultures, the problem can be made worse.

In order to overcome these issues, we need to work with the university both here and in China. So if some of my future blogs come from China, you’ll know why.

Climbing the Greasy Pole

I recently took a new job and I’ve been looking over CVs of my new staff. Of the twenty people who will be reporting to me, two of them have recently earned their MBAs.

I’m now considering how I can best use them. This is going to be interesting, because I know that one of the MBAs applied for the job that I got, and obviously failed. So I have a feeling that I may have a little fight on my hands.

I usually don’t have great problems in these kind of situations; apart from anything else, my management style tends to be to give people roles and to let them get on with things, as long as they inform me of results (and if they have a problem). If they don’t do these two things, then they are in trouble.

If the MBAs have any sense, they’ll enjoy this stuff and realize that I’ll let them do things their way. They can practice on the present situation and then start working out how to further their careers – if they’re good enough, they should be able to get my job in a year or two.