MOOC integration with classroom course ..

Yesterday successfully administered and completed the sixth (user-end) quiz on the sixth module of the Coursera self-paced  MOOC on "Competitive Strategy" for the Sem 4 MBA students on Operations Strategy at Alliance University, Bangalore, India.

Integrating the MOOC with the brick and mortar classroom course, probably for the first time in India was a real exciting and interesting exercise...

Bringing Innovation to the classroom was the intention !! Integrating the live Coursera MOOC on "Advanced Competitive Strategy" by LMU Munich for the same batch  in 2 days. The power of MOOC !!!!

An  international high quality exposure for the students from the best in the field !  The advantage of this is that students get to hear and understand from the best Professors of the world !! (other than me ..:))

My intro write-up to this experiment !!

Ge..

Disturbing turn of events in the middle east ..

Obama's biggest testing moment is now with the killing of US journalist James Foley ( age 40 years) yesterday thru decapitation after Daniel Pearls murder in 2002. We can expect lot of violence and action in the terrorist hotbeds in the middle east soon of avenge and revenge.

Even though Obama wanted to avoid a confrontation, he tried his level best, it just would'nt work that way ....

In comparison rest of Asia, Europe. Africa and Australia are relatively terror free ..

The world needs to act unitedly to uproot the cancer of terrorist violence and religious fundamentalism from the middle-east forever. If the rest of the world can live peacefully with each other, why is it that some countries in the middle-east cannot do so.

Very disturbing and sad that world events will really turn tumultuous in the coming weeks leading to lot of bloodshed, loss of lives and great suffering and pain.

ISIS terror ..

After reading articles, posts and feedback from people from different parts of the world on the crisis that has gripped parts of Iraq and Syria over the past two years and more recently in Northern Iraq over the past one month, we are feeling shocked. Were it not for the US attacks on the Islamic State terrorists, there would have been a bloodshed  and lives of thousands of lives. The world would have had to find an answer to that.

I have been scouring news sites across the Internet to find sources that describe the ISIS horror. Here is a BBC link, authentic which describes how ISIS grew over the years ..

The horrific thing now happening is the deafening silence from the countries of the world, except US, France and Britain. Are the other countries not concerned ? Among the suffering are Yazidis, Christians. Why are believers in other pats of the world not concerned when their brethren in Syria and Iraq are being killed ?

The coming days will see lots of violence and armed attacks in different parts of the world, resulting in loss of thousands of innocent lives. Are we not bothered at all ?

When will our conscience get awakened ? Will political stability inside Iraq and a broad government comprising of Shias and Sunnis there end this senseless violence spreading to the neighbouring countries ? Time will tell..

ge..

MOOC and MBAs.. a symbiotic relationship ..

It is very interesting to see how how knowledge available for free over Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) could be used by MBA schools of the world to further the knowledge base of their students.

As an experiement in India, at Alliance University Bangalore where I teach, I am integrating a course of Competitive Strategy offered as a MOOC on www.coursera.org by Prof. Tobias from LMU Munich to my classroom brick and mortar course on Operations Strategy to the final semester students of MBA.

The MOOC discusses advanced concepts of Game Theory and its applications in markets, under simultaneous, sequential, co-operative, commitmental, finite, infinite, positive sum games. It also goes to look at quantitative analysis of Innovation, like finding the value of innovation and impact of R&D in organisations.

The additional activity I do in the class to prevent impersonation and ensure that students learn each of the 6 modules well before they proceed to the next is to have a module-wise quiz on the concepts handled in that module. After the quiz we discuss the doubts and problems relating to that module so that students can clear that well before taking over the next module. In the final exams which we conduct locally here on the MOOC, we expect the students to score minimum of 80% to pass.

The advantage is that element of knowledge can be left to the student to assimilate from the Internet. The students can do that learning in an asynchronous manner discussing with their peers, extensive referencing, interactions etc.

The potential of this approach is great as students get to know more and above the matter given in the syllabus, get to know of global interesting industrial applications and cases, interact with global experts and students from across borders than be constrained by geographical boundaries of time and distance ..

Once the MBA students is given this exposure, he comes to know of this vast knowledge base out in cyberspace waiting to be tapped and can tap into this resource at leisure and convenience to improve his professional abilities and knowledge to rise up in his career ..

Interesting article by Professors Terweich and Karl Ulrich on the potential of MOOC to disrupt brick and mortar Business schools .. Click here ..

Watch the youtube video of this paper ..

george,,

25 facebook stats of 2014 ..

25 Facebook Facts and Statistics ( courtesy guardian.co.uk)

1. 30 million businesses now have a Facebook Fan Page.
2. 19 million businesses have optimized their Fan Page for mobile.
3. Businesses are paying 122% more per ad unit on Facebook than they did just a year ago.
4. 1.5 million businesses now spend money on Facebook ads.
5. 399 million Facebook users only use Facebook on mobile each month.
6. 829 million people use Facebook on a daily basis
7. 654 million people use Facebook on mobile on a daily basis, an increase from 609 million last quarter.
8. 1.32 billion people log on to Facebook at least once each month, an increase from 1.28 billion last quarter.
9. 63% of Facebook users engage on a daily basis.
10. 1.07 billion people use Facebook on their mobile device each month, an increase from 1.01 billion last quarter.
11. The average Facebook user spends 40 minutes a day on the platform.
12. 12b messages are sent per day through Facebook.
13. Facebook messenger is used by 250 million people each month.
14. Instagram is used by 200 million people each month.
15. Businesses spent $2.66 billion on Facebook advertising, an increase from $2.27 billion last quarter.
16. Mobile advertising revenue represented 62% of advertising revenue during the second quarter of 2014, a 41% increase year over year.
17. Facebook users bought $234 million dollars worth of virtual goods and gifts on Facebook over the last quarter.
18. Facebook engagement topped 1 billion during the world cup.
19. Twice as many people now watch videos on Facebook in their feed compared to just six months ago.
20. The majority ($1.175B) of Facebook’s revenue comes from US and Canada with Europe in a close second at $757 million.
21. Facebook made an average of $6.44 from US and Canadian users in Q2 compared to $.86 from the rest of the world (total revenue divided by total user base).
22. Facebook made $1.39 billion in net income during the second quarter of 2014. 23. People search 1 billion times per day on Facebook.
24. From June 12-July 13 th 350 million people joined the conversation on Facebook related to the world cup generating 3 billion interactions (posts, comments, and likes).
25. 80% of the top apps on iOS and Android use Facebook Login