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DR. J. ROBERT COLLINS: Hello, Management 308 students.
What I want to do with you today is I want to talk just
very briefly about our course plan.
You can find the course plan under Doc Sharing at the
course website.
If you look on Doc Sharing, you'll see that as an Excel
spreadsheet, basically.
And on that document, we have spelled out
each unit in the course.
Let me start by saying what kind of the general structure
of the course plan is.
The course plan is broken up into weekly units.
Each week, we'll cover a unit, and you'll see, as you enter
that unit, you'll see the material that
is displayed there.
What I'm going to do now is I'm going to go to a screen
and kind of walk you through that screen in a little bit
more detail about what's into the course plan and how you
can use that.
I want to talk to you now about the course plan.
This is another of the two really important documents for
this course.
The course plan can be found in two places on eCollege.
You can find it over here on the left-hand column under
Course Plan right there.
And again, if you go to Doc Sharing, you'll see I've
uploaded an Excel spreadsheet, which the course plan is
constructed on there.
So if you want to run a hard copy, probably, again, going
back to Doc Sharing is the best way to do that.
So let's open up the course plan and take a
quick look at it.
This is what it looks like right here.
And notice the three notes at the top of the page.
Note one--
This course plan is a summary.
Students should also read the details for
each unit on eCollege.
So once you start doing your work, go to each unit and work
from there, using this course plan as your guide.
Now the course plan does something that the unit list
does not do.
The course plan shows you the dates that each
unit is to be covered.
So we have basically a week for each unit.
We open on Monday morning at 8 o'clock, close on
Sunday night at 11:59.
It's all Central Time.
So Unit 1 opens on January 14, Monday morning, 8 o'clock.
And then it will close on the following Sunday at 11:59 PM.
And so in Unit 1, you'll see here the sequence of how we'll
cover all of the material in the course.
We'll cover Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
So under Chapter 1, we'll read and understand the syllabus
and the course plan.
Well, if you've already done Video 1, then you have already
done that, as far as the syllabus is concerned.
And so now you're doing the course plan portion of the
test video, too.
We'll cover Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 now.
So we'll read Chapter 1, "The Entrepreneurial Life." And
we'll take the minor exam associated with that.
Then we'll read Chapter 2, "Integrity and Ethics," and
take the minor exam associated with that.
Now we also have short lectures on each one of these
chapters that you can listen to or absorb as well, where
they have a few PowerPoint [INAUDIBLE] in them.
The fourth thing you'll do in the first week is to begin to
form your teams using the Student Lounge and the
eCollege Discussion Board.
So post your information in the Student Lounge I think I
may have made a mistake on the other video and called it
Virtual Office.
Either one is OK.
The Student Lounge, I think, is best for the
students to work from.
So post your information on the Student Lounge and begin
to form your teams there.
So that refers to Note 2.
Let's look at Note 2.
Teams may consist of three to five members from the class.
OK, so that's Unit 1.
And so this sequence that you see in Unit 1 is going to be
followed through in the entire course.
And Unit 2--
Unit 2 will open on January 21, which is a Monday, and
will close on January 27, which is a Tuesday.
And we'll cover Chapter 3 and the Unit 2.
And we'll also began to work on Case Study 1.
Well, where is Case Study 1?
Let's go down, scroll down.
Look down here at the bottom of course plan.
And there is Case Study 1. "Firewire Surfboards." It's
text case number three.
This in your textbook, page 698.
And you are to address questions one through five on
that case analysis.
And again, I'll refer you to the case analysis paper
uploaded to Doc Sharing.
It explains to you how you are to go about preparing your
case analysis.
So we begin working in the second week.
We began working on Case 1.
Now we also read Chapter 3, "Starting a Small Business,"
and we take the minor exam for Chapter 3.
They're are also a set of short lectures loaded up for
Chapter 3, with PowerPoint charts in it.
And I would suggest that you listen to that as well.
You need to complete and submit the Student Information
Questionnaire.
And that's a document that's been uploaded to Doc Sharing.
It's a Word document.
And you can download that document and fill in the
blanks, save it as a Word document, and then email it to
me, if you will.
You also need to finalize your teams for Unit 1.
That's the second week.
And come up your final list of teammates.
And then begin working on your business plan ideas.
What kind of business plan do you want to writ?
So that gets you through Unit 2.
Now on Unit 3, it opens on January 28 and closes on
February 3.
Now let me point out to you guys something right quickly.
These units stay open for about six days.
I will not extend the closing times on these units unless
you have prior permission from me to do that.
So once a unit opens, you need to get all your work done, get
your exams taken, give whatever submittals you've got
to get done, and get those turned in before the unit
closes down.
Because then the next unit will open up, and then we
cycle through the entire course this way.
So let's go back to Unit 3.
It opens on January 28.
Closes on February 3.
We'll cover Chapter 4 and 5 that week, and we'll also
continue our work on Case 1.
And then we'll take minor exams on both Chapter 4 and
Chapter 5, and we'll also view the PowerPoint presentations
for each chapter.
That week, also, Unit 3, we need to finalize our business
plan ideas.
So our business plan ideas need to be
finalized that week.
So at the end of Unit 3, week three, I expect to have from
you not only the members of your team, but also the
business plan idea you'll be writing your
business plan around.
Now we go to Unit 4.
That opens on February 4, closes on February 10.
We'll cover Chapter 6 that week.
Also that week, your Case Analysis 1 is due.
And so you'll have to do two things.
You'll have to go through the Chapter 6 cycle that we
normally do, which is to listen to the PowerPoint
presentation, read the chapter, and then take the
minor exam over that chapter, and submit the Case 1 analysis
into the proper drop-box for Case 1.
So we can continue the cycle now.
Now there's a few other little things that I will point out
to you, but basically, every unit is constructed in the
same type of cycle.
In Unit 5, we will cover three chapters, and in Unit 6, we
will cover three chapters.
These are your heaviest reading units of the semester,
right here.
Now why are we doing that?
Because these three chapters mesh together very nicely in
both of the units.
You see here, Chapter 7, is "The Marketing Plan," Chapter
17 is "Promotional Planning," and Chapter 18 is "Global
Opportunities." Those are all related to the overall topic
or the overall discipline of marketing.
Also in Unit 5, we'll submit our project status report.
See Note 1 above.
So let's go to Note 1, right here.
There it is.
Read and understand the process for
completing a case analysis.
The case analysis on--
I'm sorry, see Note 1.
This course plan is a summary.
Students should also read details for
each unit on eCollege.
Now what this really means is, go back to--
in fact, I'm probably going to modify this just a little bit.
But go back to the syllabus, and look and see what the
syllabus has to say about project status reports I'm
going to have to modify that just for a
little bit, I think.
But anyway, let's talk about that anyway.
On the project status report that's due on Unit 5, Week 5,
you'll need to just give me a brief, one-page, informal
status of how your team is doing.
And this is typical to any kind of status report you
would do in industry or anywhere else.
You will need to just give me a brief note on what your
schedule is, who's responsible for what, what's your
accomplishments are to this date, what you have left to
accomplish.
Are there any issues that you're having to deal with
that are difficult or are slowing you down,
for whatever reason?
Just discussing the issues on your project.
So that's a fairly simple approach.
Project status is kind of informal.
One pager, just a brief status from your routine.
Each team submits one.
And I can judge where you are on your project
work at that point.
So now we cycle through Unit 6 and Unit 7, and we
come up to Unit 8.
Unit 8 is an important unit.
For that unit, now, is the midterm exam week.
Midterm exam unit.
So you'll do two things that week.
You'll take the midterm exam and you'll submit Rough Draft
A. And the information that goes into Rough Draft A is
covered in the syllabus.
So that's an important week for us.
And I'll talk about midterm exam a little bit more as we
go along here, so that coming up to Unit 8, or Week 8,
you'll have a better feel for what we're getting into there.
Then we have Spring Break, starting on March 9.
And then we come back and begin the process again on
March 18 with Unit 9.
Unit 9 will cover Chapters 22 and 23, and we'll begin our
work on Case 2.
And so that then progresses up to Unit 10, where we'll cover
Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 and continue our work on Case 2.
And then we also submit our second project status report
that week, as well.
Now this has been a very heavy reading load up to
this point in time.
So now we're going to take a break from reading for a
couple weeks.
In Unit 11, we will submit our Rough Draft B, and we'll
submit our second case analysis.
And then we go to Unit 12, and we view three little videos
that we'll have there for you.
"How To Do Effective Presentations," "Business Plan
Content," and a reminder on how we do
business plan grading.
So we'll cover those three little videos.
So for these two weeks right here, we begin to slow down
just a little bit in our very busy semester.
Now coming up to Unit 13, we cover our last two chapters in
the material that we're going to cover, Chapter 12 and
Chapter 13.
And all of this now, starting right here on Unit 11, is
leading to the big unit, Unit 14, week starting on April 22
and ending on April 28, where we submit our business plans,
we submit our business plan presentations, and we submit
our team evaluations at that point in time.
So this covers the course plan.
There'll be some modifications and changes to
this as we go along.
But I'll try to make sure you're aware of those when
they do occur.