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How to Design Your Own No-Pay MBA

Crafting your own No-Pay MBA requires a bit more creativity than simply enrolling in an off-the-shelf business program. That said, the process is fun, and it allows for plenty of flexibility – and of course an enormous savings. Here’s how to do it:

1.    Ask yourself: What do I hope to achieve by getting an MBA?

Your goal should be realistic and attainable. You will probably  want to determine if your needs are better served by getting a traditional MBA. For example, if you want to be a Wall Street investment banker or stock broker, you might need the connections and the cred that come with a traditional MBA. However, if you want to start your own business, advance in your current job, or be eligible for jobs related to your current field that require an understanding of business, a No-Pay MBA could be perfect for you. You can see more of my thinking on this topic here. You might even float the idea to your supervisor by saying something like, “I’m looking into taking business courses. Would it be possible for me to take on some new responsibilities as I acquire new skills?”

2.    Ask yourself: Do I have the time to commit to earning an MBA?

This is a very important step. You should budget at least four hours per week per course. If you plan to take two courses at a time (which is what I am doing), then you should expect to spend eight hours each week doing coursework. When I first started my No-Pay MBA I was between jobs, and I loaded up on courses, taking four at once, which was practically a full time job! Now that I’m working, I don’t have time to listen to lectures and do homework during the week, so I block off Saturday mornings to work on my MBA.

3.    Make a list of topics you want to cover

I made my checklist by consulting the curriculum pages on the websites of Wharton, Harvard Business School, MIT’s business school, and a couple of others. You could do the same, or you could use the checklist below. I would caution against trying to duplicate my MBA or any other MOOC-based MBA course for course – as per the recommendation in this article, for example – because course availability is not guaranteed from semester to semester. Rather, I would focus on one set of topics during the first year (or first half) and a second set of topics during the second year/second half of your MBA. Check out this post and this page to see how I’ve done my first year.

A general checklist is as follows:

First year

These core courses:

 o Accounting

o Corporate Finance

o Marketing

o Management (I would recommend at least two courses in management in the first year. These could include operations management, project management, leadership, small business management, etc.)

 Plus three of the following:

 o Technology in business

o Microeconomics

o Business ethics

o Organizational psychology

o Human resources management

o Entrepreneurship

o Business innovation

Second year

 o Advanced topics in finance, corporate valuation, or accounting

o Business planning

o Business ethics

o Advanced topics in management

o Supply chain management

o Three to four courses related to an area of particular interest (mine is sustainable supply chain management for agri-business)

4.    Set ambitious but realistic targets

Now that you have your checklist and you’ve made a commitment to spend time working on your MBA, figure out how many courses you can take each semester and how long it will take you to finish your MBA.  Your biggest challenge will be staying motivated, so I suggest holding yourself to a tight timeline. Remember that MOOCs tend to be shorter that regular courses, so you can do more of them in a year. I’m planning to finish my MBA in under 3 years, while working full time.

5.    Look at this list and register for courses

As far as I can tell The MOOC List is a complete listing of free courses from all the major MOOC providers. By checking the “business and management” category frequently, you’ll stay up to date on all the free courses that might relate to your No-Pay MBA.

6.    Start racking up the SOAs!

Before you know it, you will have a (virtual) pile of Statements of Accomplishment, certificates of completion, and other documentation to show that you are mastering the skills you’ll need in the world of business. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m still skeptical of Statements of Accomplishment and the like, and I’m not convinced that you should pay anything to receive them. However, I recommend at least keeping a record of the courses you’ve completed and the skills you’ve learned so that you can present them to future employers.

7.    Let me know how your No-Pay MBA is going

Okay, this last step isn’t strictly necessary, but I’d love to hear from you. And I’ll make you a deal. If you write to me and tell me that you’re doing a No-Pay MBA, I will post your picture and a short write up about your background, your course of study, and your career goals to my website.

Maintaining Motivation

By far the biggest challenge when taking an online course is maintaining motivation. With no professor to praise you, no fellow students to foster competition, and – in a MOOC, at least – no credit-granting institution to hold you accountable, you have only your own will power and determination to get you through. Finishing one course – let alone enough courses to add up to a degree -  requires a disciplined, intrinsically motivated student.

 

The numbers tell a similar story. The New York Times recently reported on a University of Pennsylvania study on MOOCs whose headline stats included the fact that fewer than 4% of students finish the courses they register for, and 80% of those enrolled in MOOCs already hold a university degree. These results prompted Forbes to ask if MOOCs are in fact failing in their mission of democratizing education.

 

To my mind, it’s much too early to label MOOCs a failure. The fact that so many people are interested enough to register for these courses – regardless of whether they finish them – indicates the vast potential of MOOCs. Besides, there are plenty of good reasons why a person might sign up for a course and not finish it.  Maybe they were simply curious about the whole MOOC phenomenon and never intended to take a whole course. Maybe they understimated the amount of work involved. Maybe they started the course and then decided the assignments weren’t worth their time. (I’ll be honest, I’ve definitely shirked some assignments in my current MOOC. Don’t even get me started on how much I hate it when 120,000 students are given the assignment of posting a comment on a class-wide discussion forum.)

 

It all boils down to motivation.

 

So what might make it easier to sustain the motivation required to finish an online course? Anything that makes the student more socially accountable. Nobody wants to be seen as a slacker or a quitter, but as an anonymous student in an online class it hardly matters if you complete your assignments or not.

 

My personal solution to the motivation problem is to blog about my courses. Because I’ve made a personal commitment to write about my MBA experience in a public forum, I’m motivated to complete my courses – both to have new material to write about and to make good on what I’ve set out to accomplish.

 

But any strategy that fosters social accountability could have a similar effect. For example, telling friends and family that you plan to take a course can make it more likely that you’ll finish it. Discussion forums with thousands of students are useless, but a study group – even a virtual one – with just a few students could provide the necessary social accountability. Even better would be a live discussion section with a mentor or facilitator.

 

For me, the most difficult assignments are those that involve writing or creating something. Problem sets and multiple choice quizzes are easy by comparison. So I’m telling you now, I plan to work harder on creative assignments next semester. You can hold me to that. 

How to Make a Good MOOC

A recent Huffington Post blog entry asks the question, how do you define a MOOC? For example, how big does a course have to be to be considered “massive”? Does a course have to be completely free to be considered “open”? And what exactly is a “course” anyway? For example, does a podcasted lecture count as a course?

I am not overly concerned about whether my coursework falls into the MOOC genre. Rather, what matters to me is that my courses be free or nearly free, that they cover subjects that are MBA-relevant, and that they allow me the opportunity achieve mastery in a subject area.

I’ve taken several different types of free courses since I started this project. My first was a class on coffee price risk management offered by the World Bank. It wasn’t technically a MOOC because it wasn’t open – I needed a CD with an access code to take it – but it was similar to a MOOC in that I was responsible for supplying the motivation to get through the course, and there was no teacher to help me out if I got stuck. I’ve since taken courses on iTunesU, Coursera, Canvas Network, and Open Yale.

Based on that diversity of coursework, here are my criteria for what makes a good MOOC. (Bear in mind that I’m using the term “MOOC” loosely.)

  1. The course should be intended for an online audience.

It has been much easier for me to learn in courses that are actually intended for an audience that is not physically in the same room as the teacher. While it’s cool to be able to listen in on the regular live classes of top professors, it’s difficult to truly follow along when you’re missing so much of the face-to-face interaction of the classroom. This turns out not to be a problem in a course where the professor is speaking to online students.

2.  A course that follows a defined schedule is better than a self-paced course.

 I’ve taken courses with a set schedule and deadlines for homework assignments and exams. These courses are much easier to finish than those that require the student to pace themselves for the whole course. That said, flexibility is also a virtue. It’s best when the course offers a window of about two weeks to complete an assignment. That way a heavy week at work won’t totally throw you off track.

3.  A simple layout is best.

 I’ve taken most of my courses so far on Coursera, primarily because the offerings are so much better than any competitor’s. But now that I’ve started a course on a another site – Canvas Network –  I must say I have a strong preference for Coursera’s layout. The side bar on the course home page shows me everything I want to see – links to video lectures, homework assignments, the course syllabus, and the discussion forum all in one place. Canvas walks you through the course, from one module to the next, with the quizzes and discussion forums threaded through. Unfortunately, this system makes it much more complicated to find anything. I recently discovered a series of homework assignments I had missed because I hadn’t correctly navigated the course modules.

4.  Multiple forms of information delivery can be effective.

 Coursera courses are based around video lectures, often with Power Point slide shows worked through. Canvas uses more text pages, with some live (and later archived) video discussions. The World Bank coffee course I took was almost all text.  Some courses have included links to external sites – whether to provide supplemental information, real-world examples, or practice with concepts. All of these forms of delivering information are effective.  My Accounting teacher went above and beyond by including animated virtual students in his video lectures, but that’s really not necessary.

 Accounting Virtual Students

5.  Don’t just give an overview; go into detail.

 I don’t know if it’s that they didn’t have the time to do a thorough job or if they think online students won’t get it, but some of my courses have been too superficial. The main culprits here are International Organizations Management and, as I’m coming to find out, Project Management Skills for All Careers. It really irks me when the professors allude to a skill set that is necessary in the subject they are teaching, then gloss over the technicalities of employing that skill set. For example, my Project Management class recently had a module explaining the importance of making the business case for a new project, but didn’t go into any specifics about how to do the analysis, or how to present the results!

6. Make the homework difficult.

 My biggest pet peeve is when instructors assign posting to the discussion forum as homework. The forum gets so crowded with useless posts. “I agree with what So-and-so said.” Or, “Thank you, professor, for an interesting lecture.” You scroll through hundreds of these comments, only to post your own superfluous message and get “credit” for it.  Another pet peeve is easy quizzes. If I can ace the quiz without listening to the lecture, it needs to be more difficult. Problem sets are the best kind of homework. Preferably difficult ones. Kudos to my professors of Accounting and Operations Management for making good problem sets and hard quizzes.

 

In summary, a good MOOC is one that is simple to navigate, that works within the limitations of an online platform, and that is challenging enough to be rewarding.

In other words, give me what I need to succeed, then make me work for it.

My Accounting course is a great example in this regard. Sure, it was difficult, but in the end almost 10,000 of us will be receiving a Statement of Accomplishment.  And for this course, I’m truly proud to have earned it.

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