capella mba6004 unit 1 discussion dq1 & dq 2 latest 2016 april
dq 1
Summarize what you have learned from the results of the two self-assessments that you completed in this unit. Think about the role of writing and a tool such as MS Excel in your business career and include the following in your summary:
- Your writing assessment scores.
- Your Excel assessment score.
- A self-evaluation of what these assessments mean, how they might be related to your success in this program and in your career, and how you might work to improve these skills, if you are not happy with your current capabilities. Consider resources available in the Capella Writing Center and MBA Central Discussions (a wide variety of resources, posted by learners).
- A concise description of one potential direction you see your career taking, once you have completed the MBA program.
- Your initial ideas for steps you might take while pursuing your MBA to support this career direction.
Over the course of your program, you will be expected to continually improve your writing skills to develop into a professional, persuasive writer. You will be given a few writing resources in each assignment in this course to help build and improve your writing skills. Be sure to take advantage of the resources provided throughout the course so that you are prepared for the academic rigor of future courses in your program.
Response Guidelines
Responses are optional.
dq 2
Activity Context
This discussion helps you develop the skills to master the following course competency:
- Apply frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business issues.
Revisit the MBA6004 Course Alignment Map, linked in the Resources, to review how all activities assist you in achieving the course competencies and overall program outcomes. This discussion will aid you in developing a consistent approach to case study analysis, including determining what information is needed and assessing the needed information.
Activity Instructions
Apply Chaffee’s problem-solving approach on page 78 of Thinking Critically to the following situation. Use this approach to analyze the situation below, and then post your analysis of approximately four paragraphs:
Your company manufactures components for a major computer manufacturer. Your products have had some persistent quality issues. The components are items such as on-off switches and other servo-mechanisms that fail before they should. The problem is becoming quite serious and your main customer has threatened to go to another vendor if you cannot fix the problem. Step by step, what do you do to solve the problem? Be specific and explain why you take each step.
If you are not certain about what makes a good discussion posting, view the media piece Improving Discussion Posting: Effective Communication(linked in the Resources), which shows learners applying critical thinking skills to discussion posts and responses.
Response Guidelines
Respond to the posts of at least two peers. You all used the same problem-solving approach. Did you come up with the same analysis as your peers? What was the same? What was different? How do you account for those differences?
capella mba6004 unit 2 discussion dq 1 latest 2016 april
Activity Context
This discussion helps you develop the skills to master the following course competencies:
- Apply frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business issues.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
- Apply collaborative techniques to the virtual environment.
Activity Instructions
Part 1 – Initial Post
In approximately 500 words, describe a real-world business decision that you had to make or a problem that you had to solve for which there was no clear solution. Describe the problem in as much detail as possible within the length guideline. Do not tell how you solved the problem. Post your story to this discussion by Wednesday, following the instructions for initial discussion posts in this course. (If you have never confronted a business dilemma, you can research one and relate it here, making sure to provide citations.)
Note: Share only what is appropriate to share. Respect confidential information, and when writing about personal experiences, do not identify actual companies or individuals.
Part 2 – Response Guidelines
Read the posts of your peers and choose two of them to respond to; try to choose classmates who have not yet had a response. Post a response to the discussion in which you address your peers’ dilemmas. Explain how you would solve the problem each peer presented. Apply critical thinking to the issues and come up with a course of action. Support your strategy by referencing the course readings on critical thinking, using appropriate citations. Ensure that you have at least one citation.
If you would like additional guidance on applying critical thinking in discussion posts, view Improve Discussion Postings: Apply Critical Thinking (linked in the Resources).
Part 3 – Initial Post Follow-up
After you have responded to your peer, return to your original post to review the responses that you received. Post a follow-up response to your original discussion that includes the following:
- Summarize how you actually solved the business problem or decision, outlining the steps that you took.
- Based on the peer response that you received, describe how you would have dealt with the situation differently. How would you have incorporated your peer’s suggestions and why? Which aspects of their suggestions do you find helpful and which do you find problematic? Explain your assessments.
- Continue the discussion as long as it remains useful to you. Be polite and reply to any additional peers who took the time to discuss your posted dilemma.
- Also check the responses that you received in other discussions and interact as appropriate.
capella mba6004 unit 3 discussion dq 1 latest 2016 april
Activity Context
This discussion helps you develop the skills to master the following course competencies:
- Apply frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business issues.
- Apply collaborative techniques to the virtual environment.
In addition to learning from textbooks, media, and instructors, adults learn from other adults who are not in the formal role of instructors, often peers or other associates in the workplace. Developing the ability to provide and use peer feedback may be at the same time one of the most important and most neglected competencies in business today. In Unit 2, you experienced this type of learning in the discussion of the business problem you chose. If you have worked on projects in a business, you have probably had other opportunities to experience this type of collaboration. In this discussion, your job is twofold: to provide constructive feedback for two of your peers that could be useful in building their course projects and to consider feedback that your peers offer to you for your project. Here are some suggestions to help you successfully complete this discussion.
Activity Instructions
As soon as you have submitted your Annotated Outline to your instructor, post a copy in this discussion for peer review. Note that, since the deadline for the assignment is Sunday, you should complete your initial post in this discussion on Sunday. However, your responses are not due until next Wednesday.
Your initial post in this discussion has two parts:
- A one-paragraph description of your project, including the company you have chosen and the Web or Internet uses that you have chosen to investigate. Briefly explain why you chose those particular uses.
- Your Annotated Outline, in an attachment.
Response Guidelines
Check the related Unit 4 discussion, the first discussion in that unit, early next week,and complete your response by the end of the day on Wednesday of next week (Unit 4).
When you begin working on Unit 4, select two peers that you will respond to. Before moving on with your review, reply to your peers here, letting them know that you will review their papers. If any of your peers do not yet have someone who agreed to review their paper, please choose them. In this way we hope that everyone will receive 1–2 peer reviews.
capella mba6004 unit 4 discussion dq 1 & dq 2 latest 2016 april
dq 1
The purpose of this discussion is to provide, and receive, peer feedback on the Unit 3 assignment, Annotated Outline.
In the discussion in Unit 3, you posted your Annotated Outline, along with a brief description of your project direction. This discussion is the next step: providing peer reviews for two of your peers. Post your peer reviews here, with a subject line that indicates the name of the person whose outline you are reviewing, so that each of you can easily find the reviews of your outline. Here are the steps to follow to complete this peer review discussion:
Response Guidelines
- Read the posts of your peers in the Unit 3 discussion, select two to review, and download copies of those Annotated Outlines. Check for posts from the discussion to determine whether anyone is already reviewing those learners’ outlines. Try to find peers whose outlines do not already have reviewers.
- Read the Guidelines for Effective Peer Review provided in the Resources.
- Provide feedback to two of your peers. Include the author’s name in the subject line.
- Review the feedback that you receive from your peers and use the feedback as you see fit as in developing your project draft, due at the end of Unit 4.
Complete your responses to peers by the end of the day on Wednesday of this week, so that they, and you, have time to incorporate the feedback into your assignment draft in this unit.
Check the discussion threads over the next couple of days and respond to any follow-up questions your peers have about the feedback you gave them.
dq 2
Activity Context
This discussion helps you develop the skills to master the following course competency:
- Apply frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business issues.
Activity Instructions
This activity will help you learn to evaluate arguments, which, according to Chaffee in Thinking Critically, is entirely necessary for constructing your own effective arguments.
- Choose any argument from “Thinking Activity 10.3” in Thinking Critically (page 459) and use Chaffee’s three-step approach to evaluate it.
Response Guidelines
Read the posts of your peers and respond to two of them. Do you agree or disagree with their evaluation? Why?
capella mba6004 unit 5 discussion dq 1 latest 2016 april
Activity Context
This discussion helps you develop the skills to master the following course competencies:
- Apply frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business issues.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
You will analyze a case study from three ethical perspectives and publish your findings as a PowerPoint presentation. This exercise will help you apply the ethical frameworks that you have been reading about and hone them to fit your own approach when analyzing business issues. You will also gain experience in presenting information using PowerPoint.
Activity Instructions
Read Case 4.1 on page 34 in your Business Ethics as Rational Choicetext. Using the new information given to you about John Pepper in Exercise 1, develop and post a PowerPoint presentation that presents your results in applying the generalization test, utilitarian test, virtue ethics test, and any other pertinent analysis to this situation.
Your presentation should consist of 5–6 slides and include slides for an introduction, conclusion, and references. Use the notes section of your PowerPoint to add detail or to explain the content of each slide as you would if you were presenting the PowerPoint. Be sure to include citations where appropriate. As a business professional, it is important that you understand the proper way to cite and reference other author’s work. Review your APA manual as you complete your PowerPoint, focusing on Chapters 6 and 7.
The case study analysis is just one part of this assignment, so invest an equal amount of your energy into creating a presentation that conveys the information clearly and concisely, is professional in appearance, and is engaging for the audience. Use the resources provided on using PowerPoint and creating effective PowerPoint presentations to help you refine and improve your PowerPoint skills.
- Post your PowerPoint presentation by Thursday.
- Include a list of items on which you want others to focus when they review your presentation. For example, you may want to ask your peers to carefully read your conclusion to ensure that it is appropriately supported, or you may ask how effective your slides were in conveying your information.
Response Guidelines
Review the posts of your peers and respond to one of them. Address the items they would like you to focus on, but make sure your feedback considers both the content of the material and its presentation. Tell them what you liked about the presentation. Make a suggestion or two for improvement. The thoughtful feedback you give your peers will not only help them improve their work but will also provide you with insights about your own work.
capella mba6004 unit 6 discussion dq 1 & dq 2 latest 2016 april
dq 1
Activity Context
This discussion helps you develop the skills to master the following course competency:
- Apply frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business issues.
Activity Instructions
Explain, in several paragraphs (but no more than four), the implications of the Malcolm Gladwell article “How David Beats Goliath.” Apply some aspects of the article to your experience and future.
Response Guidelines
Read the posts of your peers and respond to two of them.
dq 2
Throughout the course, you have been building toward the achievement of the following competencies:
- Apply frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business issues.
- Communicate in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for members of the business professions.
- Apply collaborative techniques to the virtual environment.
For this discussion, reflect on the knowledge and skills you developed over the past six weeks. Address the following questions in your post:
- Considering the course competencies, how has your ability to perform these skills and apply this knowledge evolved?
- What concepts, skills, or insights were most relevant to you? How will you apply them to your professional work?
- What new ideas have you developed about how the MBA might apply to your career and about how you might further develop the skills you self-assessed in Unit 1?
Response Guidelines
Responses to this discussion are optional. When responding to others, provide encouraging feedback about how learners have grown over the past six weeks. If applicable, provide recommendations for how learners may continue to develop these skills and knowledge or suggest additional strategies for leveraging the knowledge gained in the course.
Note: Share only what is appropriate to share. Respect confidential information, and when writing about personal experiences, do not identify actual companies or individuals.
capella
mba6004 unit 1 assignment latest 2016 april
Activity Context
This assignment measures your development in the following course
competencies:
- Apply
frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business
issues. - Communicate
in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for
members of the business professions.
Your Strategy Recommendation project, composed of several
assignments, provides the opportunity for you to apply what you learn
throughout this course. In this assignment, you choose the business that will
be the focus of your strategy recommendation and use prewriting approaches to
do some brainstorming about your project. Then write a coherent, one-page
description of what you plan to explore and why, following the instructions
below.
In Unit 2, you will identify resources to help you develop your
strategy recommendation. In Unit 3, you outline your approach to the project.
In Unit 4, you draft your strategy, and in Unit 6, complete your final strategy
recommendation, both in a written document and in a PowerPoint presentation.
Activity Instructions
1.
Read the Strategy Recommendation course project description to
ensure that you understand what is required for your final project.
2.
If you have not already done so, review the pre-writing resources
in the Capella Writing Center. Choose a pre-writing approach that makes sense
to you as a good way to come up with some initial ideas for a strategy
recommendation. You might want to pay particular attention to:
o Clustering.
o Idea
trees.
o Free
writing.
3.
Based on what you come up with in your pre-writing, create a
one-page draft of your ideas for your project, which does at least the
following:
o Identifies
the specific business (for example, Barnes and Noble, Mike’s Plumbing) that you
will use for your strategy recommendation.
o Explain
why you chose this business. For example, you might have chosen it because you
are a customer and think they could do a better job. Or perhaps you know the
owners of this business. Maybe it is a business or industry that is of
particular interest to you. The key idea is that, over the next five weeks, you
will be working in some depth on this business. Picking a business that
interests you will make the whole project more engaging for you and the results
potentially more valuable.
4.
When you complete the first three items above, set aside another
few minutes to think about how you used a particular pre-writing approach to
generate this draft. Describe how you used the pre-writing approach, and
reflect on how it might have helped your process.
When you have finished, submit your assignment directly to your
instructor in the assignment area of the courseroom.Note:Do not use Turnitin for this
assignment.
Note:Your
instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your
writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing
information.
Optional Help – Creating Course Papers
The purpose of this assignment is to help you prepare to research
and write your final course project and to allow your instructor the
opportunity to approve and comment on your topic choice.
As with all your papers at Capella, you should ensure this is well
written, well organized, and easy to read. Use subheadings to organize your
paper. Be thorough. When you think you are all done with your paper, revisit
these directions and ensure that you met every requirement. You can also click
on the Strategy Recommendation Pre-writing scoring guide in the Resources to
see the criteria that your instructor will use to grade your work.
capella mba6004 unit 2 assignment
latest 2016 april
Activity Context
This assignment helps you develop the skills to master the
following course competencies:
- Apply
frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business issues. - Communicate
in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for
members of the business professions.
In this assignment, you will conduct research to answer five
questions about the company that you chose for your final course project in
your Unit 1 assignment, and you will submit your research in a well-organized
Microsoft Excel file. This work is the first step toward completing your final
project.
In today’s marketplace, the ability to support operational and
strategic decisions with solid information is a critical competency. Finding
information is not difficult today; the hard part is coming up with useful,
high-quality information that you can count on. This competency involves
several sub-skills, equally important for the business world and for your
academic work, including searching for appropriate resources, evaluating the
credibility and usefulness of the information you find, and synthesizing the
information to make evidence-based decisions.
To locate truly useful information, you need to know what you are
looking for and understand the questions you need to ask to get you there.
While this assignment will help you build skills in using the library, the
Internet is sometimes a better source for answering certain questions. For that
reason, you should use both the Capella library and the Internet for this
assignment.
Activity Instructions
Gather some basic information about
your target company.While
you are not required to submit this information as part of your MS Excel file,
it will help you answer the questions.
- Official
corporate name of the company you chose. - Headquarters
location. - URL
of the company Web site. - Description
of the company’s primary products or services (or both). - Industry
category (or categories) in which this company operates.
Answer the five questions in the list
below.Use
both the Capella library and Internet search engines to complete this
assignment. Do not rely on either one exclusively.
1.
What is one way that your chosen company is currently using the
Internet or social media?
2.
What is one way that some other company in the same industry as
your chosen business is already using the Internet or social media?
3.
How might Internet or social media use present ethical problems
for your chosen company?
4.
What technology exists that your company should know about as its
management considers Internet use?
5.
What is one way that demographics, global presence, or diversity
might impact your companies’ choices about Internet and social media use?
Create an Excel document to house the
information for your assignment.Include arowfor each of the five questions.
Include acolumnfor each of the following categories
of information:
- Statement
of the original question. - Analysis
of the information needed to answer that question and description of any
challenges you had answering the question (2–4 sentences). - Answer
to the question with an APA formatted in-text citation. - Source
(or sources) for your answer in full APA citation. - Your
assessment of the credibility of the information you found (2–4
sentences). - Your
rating of the credibility of the source on a scale of 1 to 5, with one
being the lowest credibility and 5 being the highest. - Your
description of the search strategy that you used to find the answer to the
question.
Use the ExcelAVERAGEfunction to find the
average credibility score of all of your sources.Write
one sentence to describe the general level of credibility of the material you
found. If the average score for your sources was 1 to 3, explain why finding
credible sources was difficult. Describe how you will handle this problem in
your final project.
Submit the assignment in your Excel
document.You
are being asked to submit this assignment in an Excel format to demonstrate
your basic Excel skills, in preparation for future courses.
Review the Finding Credible Sources scoring guide in the Resources
to be sure that you have addressed the grading criteria of this assignment.
Optional Help – Brushing Up on Skills
The purpose of this assignment is to help you learn to search for
information that helps you form opinions and support or refute ideas. Use this
assignment to practice using the Internet and Capella library for finding
information. At the same time, remember that determining the credibility of
information that you find is paramount. Of course, sometimes you may not be
able to find credible sources. When that happens, you have to decide whether or
how to use any sources that you question.
Use the information provided with this assignment (linked in the
Resources) to help you search in the library, evaluate your sources, and
properly cite each source.
- If
you have not used an online research library recently, you will want to
access Capella’s Tour the Library presentation. - Remember
the RAILS resources from the second study in this unit. - To
brush up on your search skills, review the Research Guide – MBA. - To
brush up on your APA formatting skills, read the APA Style and Formatting
page on iGuide. - To
brush up on your skills in MS Excel, use the Microsoft Tutorials page on
iGuide. - For
a better understanding of when to use Wikipedia, read Can I Use Wikipedia?
Note:Your
instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your
writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing
information.
capella mba6004 unit 3 assignment
latest 2016 april
Activity Context
This assignment helps you develop the skills to master the
following course competencies:
- Apply
frameworks and theoretical concepts to systematically analyze business
issues. - Communicate
in a manner that is professional and consistent with expectations for
members of the business professions.
While everyone has their own process for writing, creating an
outline is often an important early step in the process in all types of
writing, even for the most seasoned writers. By creating an outline, you draft
a plan that organizes your thoughts, helps you see gaps in your thought
process, and enables you to decide where in your paper you will address
particular issues.
An annotated outline is a document that organizes the main
sections to be included in your final course paper. The annotations are based
on thinking through your approach to the paper and developing enough detail
that anyone who reads the outline can follow your thought process.
The purpose of this assignment is threefold:
- To
build an outline that shows the content and organization of your paper
both so your instructor can approve it and to make it easier for you to
move forward. - To
demonstrate that you have conducted some research and know how to cite in
APA format by including some quotations. Note that you may or may not use
these sources and quotes in your actual paper; you may have found better
sources in a couple of weeks. - To
demonstrate your ability to create a well-organized document, suitable for
academics or business, that meets established criteria.
Activity Instructions
For this assignment, create an Annotated Outline that provides a
framework, or skeleton, of your final paper and presentation for this course.
Begin by re-reading the Strategy Recommendation project
description for a complete list of the topics to be addressed in your project.
Your Annotated Outline must state the name of your chosen business
and must include the following:
- An
introduction. - A
conclusion. - At
least four other headings in between: - Each
of the four headings must have at least two sub-points to develop the
detail required. - Each
of the four headings must incorporate at least one quotation or
paraphrase from a source that you might use for support, with an APA
in-text citation. - In
your final draft, one of your headings or subheadings will specifically
address the ethical aspects associated with your chosen business.
However, since we will not address ethical issues until Unit 5, you may
include a heading or subheading as a placeholder in this assignment, to
be completed after Unit 5. - One
of your headings should be entitled Recommendations. - A
section for References. In that section, list the full APA citation for
all the sources you used in the annotated outline.
Refer to Developing an Annotated Outline (linked in the Resources)
from the Capella Writing Center for more information on annotated outlines.
Submission Requirements
- Written communication:Written communication is
free of errors that detract from the overall message. - APA formatting:Resources and citations
are formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting. - Number of resources:Minimum of 2 resources.
- Length of paper:2–4 typed, double-spaced
pages. - Font and font size:Times New Roman, 12 point.
Refer to the Annotated Outline scoring guide to ensure that you
meet the grading criteria for this assessment.
Submit your assignment to your instructor no later than midnight
on Sunday of this week.
After you submit your assignment to your instructor:
- Submit
a copy of the assignment to Smarthinking (linked in the Resources),
requesting assistance with ideas and organization (that is,
“global” issues). - Post
a copy in the Peer Review discussion in this unit. By Tuesday of next week,
select the Annotated Outline submitted by one of your peers and provide
your review in the discussion in Unit 4. Focus on what you see as global
issues—questions and comments related to the ideas and the structure of
the outline–rather than local issues such as spelling and grammar.
Optional Help – Brushing Up on Skills
Creating an outline is an important early step in writing.
Outlines are effectively used to create all types of written works, from
academic papers to business documents, movie scripts to novels. As we noted
above, when you create an outline you help yourself to organize your thoughts,
create a flow of information, and identify gaps in what you plan to cover.
Creating an outline also helps to make a larger writing project
less daunting. Once you have an effective outline in place, you have done at
least 25 percent of your work. Then, you need just complete the research and
flesh the paper out. If you experience writer’s block, as both novice and
experienced writers sometimes do, an outline allows you to skip
