|
|
Bus 269 Session B Oct 16-Dec 7 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Prof. Randall Stross |
Course website: |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
This is not a
lecture course in online form. It is a discussion-oriented seminar, in which
students, helped by the instructor, draw lessons from past managerial
experience captured in case studies. All students are expected
to actively participate and critically engage in discussion, with the
instructor and with each other The class takes place
entirely online, enabling students to participate from far-flung
locales. The class will run asynchronously, that is, students will be
able to log on, check the site and make contributions at any time the forum
is open. The instructor will serve
as discussion guide, adding comments and steering the discussion, as needed.
To ensure the discussion remains well-focused and easy to follow, it will
consist of a single forum (without multiple threads). Students will also
hone analytical skills preparing a short research paper
analyzing an opportunity to make a strategic corporate decision that a
company in the computer industry faces today. Any student with an
interest in the computer industry is welcome; no prior industry-specific
professional experience is assumed. The Online Format During each Tuesday
forum, students will submit via the web multiple comments that
contribute to the online discussion of the course readings with the
instructor and fellow students. Every submission will be
evaluated and a judgment of its quality assigned. Such intensive feedback
departs from custom, of course; in a conventional classroom setting,
there is no need to evaluate every student's spoken utterance. Online,
however, the contributions to the forum constitute a major component of
the course; hence, the importance of providing students with lots of
feedback and giving due credit to those who are making the greatest effort to
contribute the most. Each submission will be
assigned 0-5 points: A minimum of three posts
is required for each forum. A student may not submit a post for
credit more than once within a 45-minute time span. The week's score will be
the average of three posts, if only three are submitted, or
the average of the three best posts, if four are submitted. There
is no limit on the number of submissions possible, but only the first four
posts in a forum will count in the calculation of
that week's best scores. The instructor will
launch new topics for discussion during the course of the forum. Students may
submit a new topic candidate to the instructor, which will be evaluated like
a post to the active forum. The instructor will decide whether or not to
introduce it as a topic for class discussion. The forum will discuss
six topics during the course of the day. The first topic will be
discussed from midnight to 9:00 a.m.. The second, at noontime. The third at
5:00 pm, with topic changes following at 7:00, 9:00 and the last one at
11:00. This schedule attempts to balance two competing goals: providing ample
time for students to compose posts and react to one another's contributions,
and providing frequent changes in topic. Once a new topic becomes
active, many students are likely to comment. The very first student to
address the topic is the ONLY one that will talk solely about the topic. The
second and subsequent contributors must comment not only about the topic, but
also about the preceding comments. Posts that do not acknowledge
and engage the comments of fellow students that came before will be evaluated
negatively. The only comments that can be safely ignored are those
that appeared in the forum within five minutes of when your own post is
submitted. (This saves the student who is busily composing from
continually having to rewrite just as he or she is about to submit.) Students should not go
out of their way to avoid the obligation of responding to classmates’
comments. A student who posts in the first ten minutes of the noontime forum
may NOT post in the first ten minutes of the forum when it reopens at 5:00
p.m. After the close of the
forum at midnight on Tuesday, every student must pay one additional
visit on Wednesday to read the last entries. Photo Before uploading,
please crop the image so that it is literally square (within photo
editing software, the trick is to select the desired area holding down the
Shift key when dragging the cursor, then copying and pasting into a new
frame). If it isn't perfectly square, it will display a distorted image on
the web page. The course web site has a
link for uploading the photograph. Textbooks David Vise and Mark
Malseed, The Google Story (hardcover or paperback) (Due to the threat of
viruses, no emailed attachments will be accepted, under any circumstances,
for any assignment.) Research Paper The paper
should take the voice of an imaginary consultant, who has been
retained by the company's executive team to address a single strategic
question. Because of the limited
time available to the students, the paper's scope should be limited
to addressing a single challenge. The paper should not take on a history
of the entire company or a comprehensive review of all functional areas,
and so on. It should stick to simply discussing the single strategic
question. That question should be
very specific. "Reviewing options for growth" is too vague.
"Considering spinning out the printer division" (if HP is the
selected company) is appropriately specific. The decision should be one made
at the company-level, not departmental level. It should have a fundamental
impact on the entire company, and is sufficiently significant that it would
be voted upon by the company's board of directors. You may elect to write
your report on your current or a past employer, but it too should be focused
on the single major strategic question, and the that question should
still be open, and not a decision that was recently made already. To ensure a tight focus,
the submission will be limited to 2,000 or fewer words. Submissions that
exceed the word-limit will not be accepted. There is no formal format
nor a checklist of sections that should be included. The one requirement is
that the report is to be explicitly prescriptive, recommending concrete
action(s), and showing why. You should state not only the question but your
recommendation at the very beginning of the paper. Deadlines Semester Grade
Schedule
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||