Business Policy and Strategy (BUS 4403) at UoPeople

Last term, I also took Business Policy and Strategy (BUS 4403) at the UoPeople. As the name indicates, the course is about developing business policies and business strategies. You learn about creating and implementing business policies and strategies in the class. You also learn about various aspects of business policies and strategies like economic, political, cultural, and human resources.

My class had just over 20 students, and not many dropped out. Unfair peer assessment was very prevalent in the course. My professor was originally from the Caribbean (Jamaica to be precise) but was living in the US. He had an MBA and a DBA from the US. He had been instructing at the since 2016. He was active throughout the course, and I had no quibbles about him.

I suggest planning this course wisely because you’ve to write 8 Discussion Assignments, 7 Written Assignments, and 8 Learning Journals straight without any break. The course is a bit demanding in that aspect especially if you’re taking three or more courses. There are 14 prescribed books/links for this class. The course assumes that some of the links are books. The textbooks assigned for this class are from Bookboon, which are mostly very dull and filled with ads.

The Discussion and Written Assignments are worth 50% or 25% each. If your peers don’t access you fairly or if your instructor isn’t understanding, you’re totally SOL in the class. Unfortunately, both were true in my case to some extent. My peers graded me unfairly, especially in the Written Assignment. However, it might not be their fault entirely, but the school’s blunder. I’ll explain it in a moment.

The Discussion Assignments are straightforward. You analyze a case study each week for most of the weeks. In the Written Assignments, you answer some of the questions related to the same case studies you analyze during the week by writing an essay. Unfair peer assessment comes into play directly from the school because the university expects you to rate 0, 1, and 2 based on the answer provided by it for each week’s case study. For example, in the answer key for each of the rubrics, the school would comment “Superior written essays will generally mention and explain the following elements when discussing this topic.” If students don’t discuss those specific aspects, peers would grade each other unfairly. I believe the school is directly responsible for this. The readings for case studies are quite lengthy, and it’s a truly unfair expectation that students would discuss those particular aspects in their essays. The Written Assignments weigh very heavily in the course, i.e. 25%/7 = 3.57% each. On top of that, the ratings are 0 or 1 and 0-2 for most assessment aspects of the essays. Hence, the unfair peer assessment that you would receive in the Written Assignments, can’t be entirely blamed on students.

The Learning Journals are worth 10% of the class. They try to invoke critical thinking in you by asking you to describe practical policies of real-life companies from your experiences and observations.

The two Graded Quizzes are worth 20% or 10% each. You’ve to answer 25 and 15 questions in the Graded Quiz 3 and Graded Quiz 6, respectively. You have to answer the questions in 30 minutes. The Graded Quizzes were fairly easy. The Final is worth 20% of the class. It had 60 questions. I didn’t find it very challenging. You have to finish the Exam in 60 minutes. There were plenty of repeated questions from the previous Graded and non-Graded Quizzes and the Final Review Quiz in the Final. I was done with the Exam in 26 minutes and reviewed my answers in 30 minutes. It’s probably the quickest I’ve finished a proctored Exam at the school. The questions on the Graded Quizzes and the Final Exam mostly involved case studies you analyze in the class, elements and abbreviations of DMAIC, personality type acronyms of Myers-Briggs, development policies and stages, and organizational structure, and so on.

Final thoughts, I ended up getting an A in the class. I didn’t find the course difficult, but the course load can be cumbersome, especially for a student taking three or more classes. I suggest pairing this class with Quality Management (BUS 4406) as many of the concepts like Six Sigma and DMAIC overlap in both the courses. In a nutshell, the course felt like learning about business policies and strategies primarily by analyzing various case studies to me.