Business Plan Paper

Course E-Mail, Dialogue Forum Posts, Assignment/Project Criteria Information

Regent University requires faculty to use the Regent University student email assigned to students when they begin their program at the university. Consequently, be sure to check your Regent e-mail account frequently for messages from your course instructors regarding course instructions and communications. For the current session, it is recommended that you set your e-mail program to receive “html” e-mails so that the information you receive is formatted.

Important Grading Criteria Information for This Course

You need to carefully read the information below.

First, make sure you thoroughly read the syllabus. Then read it again. It is the contract between you and me for this course. This document contains information you need to know to succeed in this course.

The information below is to give you key guidance as you move through all the projects in this course. Put this document somewhere where you can reference it repeatedly and access the information as you need it during the session.

• ❖ This course requires graduate-level work on your part. This is a rigorous MBA program and you need to be ready to carve something off your schedule to allocate the time required for you to complete the coursework and assignments (12 to 15 hours per week).
• ❖ The assignments require you to read, research, and engage in in-depth critical analysis and thinking. It’s not a “check off the box” style program! If you don’t read the material in each period, then you can’t think and reflect on that material. This will ultimately lead to very pithy content in all your dialogue postings and projects. That, in turn, will lead to low scores.

Dialogue Forums in Blackboard—Your Discussion/Conversation with Peers--Not “Check Off the Box”

• ❖ On-campus students engage in the dialogue forums in the classroom, or a portion of the dialogue forums in the classroom and Blackboard.
• ❖ Online dialogues forums are the online version of a class discussion with your classmates regarding the subject matter for that period.
• ❖ Dialogue forums require you to read/research the period reading assignments and take time to construct organized and well-thought-out ideas and concepts.
• ❖ You don’t have to read/listen to everything for that period to start posting, but you should not wait until you have read/viewed everything to start posting either. There’s a balance in here between getting started and waiting too long to get started.

You are in no way restricted from researching well beyond the reading material in the assignments. Those who consistently score highest with dialogue posts are those who integrate assigned reading materials with other relevant material they find from other sources (Regent Library business databases, CNN, Fox News, blogs, etc.) and create unique, innovative, and thought-provoking posts. Each

high-scoring post has the citations/references that support each idea, position, or premise the student presents, and their logic and thinking is supported with research citations.

Reading the period resource materials gives you the content knowledge you need to engage in a conversation with the other students. You can’t competently talk about last weekend’s football game if you didn’t watch it. Nor can you discuss period topics if you don’t read the material. View the dialogue as an ongoing online conversation, and look for ways to engage in critical thinking, but have fun with it at the same time. The best advice is for you to be yourself at your best!

The expectation is that you will reference/cite your readings (whether assigned in the syllabus or discovered from other outside reading) in your dialogue forum posts. For that reason (the important part follows here!), you are expected to have citations to support all the information you are presenting in a dialogue post from your readings and to properly cite that reference at the end of that post.

That’s the minimum. It won’t get you the highest number of points, but it will prevent you from getting “0” points for that specific post. Not having any citations is equal to no points, and it infers that you have posted an opinion (or just fabricated material). Opinions in the course and program do not count. That’s because they don’t get you very far in the marketplace either. Business decisions are not based on what you think, but on what you know from your research.

In brief, dialogue posts are not opinions, instant messages, “filler,” or fluff and puff. They are demonstrations of your capability to research, pull thoughts together, organize your thinking, and connect a conscious logical persuasive stream of communication. Check the Syllabus for specific directions related to each period’s dialogues and the time frames for posting. Actual dialogue content does vary from course to course, and period to period, but the style and expectation does not.

Your original dialogue post and response post for each period are set up to be 2 posts total per week. Again, the syllabus has the recommended posting schedule. In other words, don’t wait until the last two hours on the last day of the period to post both of your dialogue postings as you will not be happy with your score. If you post all your dialogues on the last day of the period, you will automatically lose 30 points.

Per the syllabus, there is no credit given for any posts made after a period has closed on Sunday night at midnight (Saturday night at midnight for period 4).

SBL MBA Program Dialogue Posting Policy for this Course (from the syllabus)

Requirements Regarding Blackboard Discussions & Quizzes

This is an eight-week course. Each course consists of four (4) periods. Periods 2, 3, and 4 have projects due in them. Period 4 ends on a Saturday instead of a Sunday.

Courses with Quizzes

Period quizzes are to be completed no later than 11:59 pm on the Sunday of the second week of a period (students are encouraged to finish them earlier in the period). Period 4

is an exception when the quiz is due no later than 11:59 pm on the Saturday the session ends. Quizzes cannot be taken after a period ends and will not be accepted or considered for a score once the period ends. Any variances to this will be noted by the instructor in Blackboard.

Dialogue Discussion Topic & Response Posts

Each week of the 8-week period requires 1 original post to a discussion question/topic for that period in Blackboard. Students are required to conduct research on each original question/topic. Students then need to post 1 response to another student’s original post. There will be a total of 2 posts (1 original, 1 response) for any one week in the session (one original post and one response post per week). Some course topics lend themselves to different-styled instructional activities. Any variances in the dialogue style or number of posts for a course will be noted by the instructor in Blackboard and communicated to the students at the beginning of the course. Note that dialogue discussions are not a message board, nor opinion pieces. Students must produce and post substantive messages that are academically sound. As a guide, each dialogue post (both the original post and response post) should include a minimum of 2-3 academic or professional citations. These can come from original research you conduct in your textbooks, popular press articles, professional publications, or the Regent University Library’s online database resources. All papers, dialogue posts, projects, and essays at Regent University must follow APA 6th edition writing style. Dialogue posts need to follow the directions immediately below.

Posting Schedule for a Week:

The first original post should be made as early in the week as possible, preferably no later than a Wednesday. The response post needs to be made no later than 11:59 pm on the Sunday of that week (students are always encouraged to post sooner so other students have content to which they can respond). Period 4 is an exception when the last post is due no later than 11:59 pm on the Saturday the session ends.

Dialogue submissions after the period ends will not be accepted or considered for a score.

*See the SBL website link immediately before the assignments table toward the end of this syllabus for the specific due dates for each period for the MBA Program.

It is imperative to post your first post in a timely manner to move the discussion ahead through your participation and the content of your post. Failure to regularly participate and submit within the above timeframe listed above, and/or posting more than one post on the same day of a period will attract point losses on scores.

If you have technical problems with Blackboard and/or are not able to log in, please contact the Help Desk/IT department. You can e-mail the Help Desk at: [email protected] or call at (757) 352-4076.

Project Elements in this Course

There will be 2 important elements in each of the projects in this course:

Content: First is the content. It must be complete, thorough, and in-depth. No excuses are acceptable on this one! Minor projects are expected to be a minimum of

12 pages in length. The Major project has no page limit. Samples are provided for each project to provide a guideline as to format and length.

Format: Second is format. That’s where your style and creativity can show through. The combination puts the power for a dynamic and impacting project into your hands—but you must use it! This is a marketing course, so I expect you to market your work, yourself, and your ideas in some dynamic and impacting ways.

Some of the projects have an outline to follow, and I encourage you to use the same wording as the outline headings and subheadings in your project document so there is no doubt that you included everything required by the assignment. You can always include more headings and subheadings, but I will be looking for what the assignment calls for at the very minimum.

Students often lament they cannot get all the information into an assignment using the conventional narrative paragraph format. Consider using bullet points and numbering to highlight key information. Not only does it make it easier to read/digest, but it conserves words! The dialogues and assignments in this program will push you to write concisely, precisely, and succinctly. Formatting can help you in this manner as well. Put information into a table, or other visual format to make it easier to read. A photo can save you writing a thousand words, and its caption can emphasize a key point. You’re only limited by your own demented imagination!

How Does the Instructor Review Your Projects?

This section explains the process I use to review/grade your project? This is the process I follow, and exactly what I look for (including the things that will cost you points). When I receive your project, here are the things I do in the exact order that I do them:

• ❖ Avoid using “in order to” and “being that” I search your document for places where you wrote “in order to” or “being that” and count the number of times you used either phrase. I deduct 2 points under the “communication” element of the grading rubric for each instance of the phrase I find. These are superfluous “rubber stamp” words that are not required or expected in professional writing. We all write them into drafts, but they should be edited out before you submit your final assignment.
• ❖ Don’t use the word “towards.” There is no such word in the United States. Use “toward.” 2 points off for each instance if I find it in your work.
• ❖ Here’s the Number 1 Error in MBA assignments! I search for instances where you put quotation marks inside periods or commas (the most common punctuation error I see every session). Just for the record, periods and commas ALWAYS fall inside quotation marks. If you just discovered through reading this that you have been doing this incorrectly, then you’ve had fair warning to correct it from this point forward or you will lose points in this program. I will take off 2 points for each instance of this punctuation error I find. You should not be making punctuation errors in graduate school!
• ❖ I do a spell check of your document. If you didn’t spell check your document, then I will catch the misspelled words you didn’t catch. You are in a professional graduate MBA program where you are expected to impact the world through your writing, speaking, and thinking. If you can’t get basic spelling correct with tools

• such as spell check, then there’s a problem! Checking for misspelled words should have been performed by you. If I catch them, then you can count on losing 2 points per instance of a misspelled word.
• ❖ By the way, I should never, ever see the mistakes listed above in an assignment from you after they have occurred once and have been brought to your attention in an assignment evaluation or draft for correction. If I see them again in a second project assignment, then twice as many points will be deducted. For those of you who choose not to read this document, you will keep wondering why you lose increasingly more points throughout the semester.
• ❖ Next, I look to see that you have all the content elements called for by the assignment. If the assignment asks for “industry trends,” then I go looking for a section entitled industry trends. This is where it is extremely helpful if you use the wording in the project assignment as a heading or subheading. It makes it easy to see that you have all the content elements.
• Yes, you can create more headings and subheadings of your own if you need them for your document. You can create as many as you want, but I am first looking to see that you have all the required elements of the assignment. That tells me you met the standards of the assignment. Then I will look to see if you did anything to exceed the standards of the assignment!
• ❖ I then review the format elements. If a content outline is required, then I look to see that it is there. If a table of contents is required or used, then I look to see that you used the Table of Contents (TOC) command in Microsoft Word to create it with. If you don’t use the TOC command, then you will lose points. If you don’t know how to do this, then learn how to do it now—not 2 hours before the assignment is due! It takes some practice to get used to using it, but will save you a lot of time in the future as you construct documents.
• ❖ Next, I read for continuity, logic, and flow of thoughts. You know from experience that you cannot just “bolt” things together without writing/editing material to make wording consistent and transitions smooth from one section to another.
• ❖ Then I look for the support for what you have put into your assignment (citations and references). If there are no citations, references, etc., then it is an opinion piece, and opinions are not acceptable in this MBA program. The project will receive a maximum score of 50 if there are no citations/references. For example, if you state, “80 percent of the population is expected to purchase computers in the next decade,” then I expect to see the citation from which you found this statistic. Otherwise, you made it up!

You will get into trouble quickly in this course by not citing. There is no such thing as over-citing. This applies to everything you do in the course—dialogues, projects, etc. List all your citations and references for ALL assignments—no exceptions!

• ❖ Finally, I look for how you used your own style and creativity to “package” the project into a presentation and the impact it would have if I were the recipient in a business setting (after all, this is a marketing course). Does the internal communication look like an internal communication? Or did you just do a plain

• generic vanilla double-spaced assignment without any rhyme, rhythm, or logic? BTW, I know of no styles in which double-spaced documents are used in business. Double spacing implies, “I’m trying to make it look longer than it really is.” Don’t double space anything in this course.
• ❖ Did you use photos to take the reader there, show your product or service, etc.? Did you construct a chart, table, graph, use a diagram, or other visual to assist in communicating a concept? Did you use a caption under the photo to emphasize a key point? Did you use a caption to explain the chart of graph? Don’t assume that just because you put it there, that it will be understood.

Citations and References

All MBA papers, dialogue posts, projects, and essays at Regent University must follow APA writing style. APA in the MBA program only applies to citations, references, and bibliography. No other parts of APA are followed.

The MBA program only requires you to use APA style for footnotes—not for any other part of the document.

APA, for example, has rules for everything from footnotes to running heads to spacing and is used primarily for formal research style documents. The MBA Program only requires you adhere to the APA footnoting and reference style. The remainder to the formatting is up to you so you have latitude in which to display your creativity, style, formatting, etc., or meet/exceed assignment requirements.

Font Choice and Point Sizes

Don’t use a serif font such as Times New Roman, etc. (if at this point, you have no idea what a serif or serif font is, then look it up now.) In typography, a serif is a small line attached to the end of a stroke in a letter or symbol. A typeface with serifs is called a serif typeface (or serifed typeface). A typeface without serifs is called sans serif or sans-serif, from the French word sans, meaning "without."

	Sans-serif font
	Serif font
	Serif font (red serifs)

You need to use a block letter (sans serif) font for projects in this course. Fonts with serifs make it impossible for people with visual disabilities to distinguish letters. Block fonts (sans serif) provide clean crisp letters that are easy for me to read. BTW, the wild wonderful world of business prefers fonts for business documents that are sans serif (without serifs), although you would be surprised how many people are not aware of this. It will also make you ADA compliant.

• ❖ Sans serif fonts are most commonly used in business so people with visual disabilities can more easily read them.
• ❖ You should never use anything less than 12-point size with whatever font you use. This will make all your work ADA compliant as well.

Are you one of those of those people who uses whatever the default setting is in Microsoft Word (which is currently Calibri 11 point)? Learn how to change fonts and point sizes if you don’t know how. When assignments come in with default settings, it implies you didn’t know, didn’t care, or didn’t bother.

Review of Drafts

If you get a draft of your project to me no later than midnight on the Wednesday before the Sunday it is due, I will give you feedback on it and let you know if you are on track. Drafts need to be e-mailed directly to me and titled as instructed in the syllabus.

The syllabus instructs you on how to title your projects and the subject lines in the e-mails you send with your draft project attached. Faculty let Microsoft Outlook auto-sort your project submissions as they are received by e-mail, or downloaded from Blackboard. Do not post drafts in Blackboard. History in this course screams that those who submit drafts ultimately make the highest scores on the projects in the course! It’s free advice as to what you need to do to your assignment to get a good score. All you need to do is submit a draft four days earlier than the due date! Less than 10 percent of each class exercises the draft option.

Remember, a draft must have sufficient content to evaluate. Submitting only an outline will not be sufficient to determine anything. It does not have to be “pretty” for fully formatted at the draft point. It’s merely to let you know if you are on track. It must, however, be more than a proposed outline. I will not review the draft if it comes in past Wednesday as I will be working on other assignments related to other courses by that time.

Project Synergy in this Course

Look for ways to tie all your projects together. Everything you do in this course should be directing and targeting you toward the Major Project 1 in period 4. The course is designed so that the work you do for each dialogue can cover some of the research you need to do for a project, and minor projects 1 and 2 can chip away at the work you need to do for the major project. Each of the projects can be used to tackle some of the research required in the final project. Look at the content for all the projects and determine which parts can be researched and analyzed in the activities leading up to each one. That way, you are constantly chipping away at the research and information required for the next assignment.

Many of you are full-time working professionals. Look for ways to combine assignments with your professional work. For example, if you work in the medical field, and you have a back-burner project in which you need to research and find information related to introducing a new product into the marketplace, then use this course to do that research. That way, when you are at work, you’re working on your course, and when you’re working on your course, you’re at work! You can even tie your dialogue content into collecting data and information toward your professional work.

Final Due Date for ALL Course Projects

All assignments are due by 12 midnight Saturday on the last week of Period 4. After this date, no assignments will be accepted for grading. This is a SBL MBA program policy due to the short turnaround time for grade submission required by the Office of the Registrar.

Summary

Be creative in this course. Although everyone is working within the same project outline, there is a tremendous amount of room for creativity and innovation. Use it to differentiate yourself from the crowd in some positive, innovative, and creative manner.