Obtaining An Online MBA And Its Rewards

If you are busy with work but you desire to get a graduate degree then studying online might only be the thing that can assist you. One of the things which busy working people try is an online MBA so they can continue working and yet they can also obtain the degree that will aid them advance in their selected professions. If you feel that an online MBA is a thing that you could be capable to gain from then just simply keep reading for more info.

There are numerous schools that come with online MBA programs but one factor that you have to do if you want an MBA would be to choose a school that is reputable. That’s right, you can find online MBA programs which are offered by genuine schools and there are those programs that are being provided by schools that you can’t rely on by any means. If you’d like that MBA degree to be worth anything then make certain that the school you select is legitimate.

You’ll be investing a long time, effort, and money with an MBA online so just what you must do is obtain a list of school that provide programs on an MBA online and you can check their certifications. As soon as that is done, you could conduct a examine of their MBA programs and see which one fit you best. There are several schools that provide quick track programs so those might be of interest to you if you happen to are in a rush.

Are you aware that obtaining a master of business administration online also can cost you less money compared to standard schooling? That’s right, and this is also a key reason the reason why more and more people choose the distance learning programs. You know how tuition in traditional schools can cost an arm as well as a leg but this is not the situation with the online programs.

After you have made up your mind about obtaining a master of business administration online then you might want to look for several study instructions. Studying online might sound simple nevertheless it has issues of its own and you need to be ready for all of them or else you may just never finish that online degree. If you wish to obtain points on precisely how you can effectively acquire a degree online then you might examine the message boards through the school that you have signed up for. It’s now standard practice to have a discussion board exactly where all distance learning students might talk.

Want to find out more about online MBA, then visit FKB Consulting's site on how to choose the best online MBA programs for your needs.

Decisions Executive MBA Students Face

The decision to enroll in an Executive MBA program is one rife with difficult questions, the answers to which may well determine the extent of your success as a future executive. Most people entering Executive MBA programs are young professionals aspiring to reach greater heights in their field; they want the education to temper their passion for leading a business in the right direction, but it’s not easy choosing the best program or teaching style. Business schools around the country design Executive MBA programs in any possible format: online education, classes that emphasize peer involvement, mentorships from industry professionals—the list goes on. I wish all MBA students could take the outstanding classes offered at various Executive MBA programs, but that’s hardly a realistic aspiration.

Let’s address some of the biggest decisions a student has to make when you look through potential Executive MBA programs.

Classes taught online or in person?

The difference between online and in person education is one of the biggest issues concerning graduate business degrees in general. There are strong arguments to be had on both sides, but I think the decision really hinges on whatever works for your unique lifestyle. If you’re simultaneously interning at another business or even running your own small enterprise on the side, you might see great appeal in taking an online Executive MBA program that offers a relatively freer schedule. You might be the lone wolf student who thrives on the challenge of completing coursework on your own, relying on your own philosophy of leadership to guide them through lessons and hypothetical management scenarios.

On the other hand, you might thrive in an environment where you’re among your peers, bouncing ideas and strategies off one another. The idea of working alongside a professor with real world experience leading a business and a team of trained professionals might appeal to you if you’ve never worked with someone like that before. If you’re looking for greater involvement and interaction from your faculty and classmates, taking your MBA classes in person is obvious the right choice for you.

Fulltime or balanced with work?

Once you’ve decided on the atmosphere of your Executive MBA program, it’s time to decide the extent to which you want to involve yourself in classwork. Some students prefer to get their degree out of the way as quickly as possible so they can enter the working world immediately. These ambitious students usually cram as many classes as they can per semester, trying to graduate in record time. You might prefer the lightning round MBA path, but there are more steadily paced options.

Though it’s tempting to choose the quickest path to your Executive MBA, not every student has the luxury of dropping everything in their life to go back to school. It takes a serious time commitment to complete an MBA, and you might not have the option of sacrificing your day job for it. If that’s the case, then I highly recommend completing your Executive MBA over a number of semesters, giving yourself only as much classwork as you can handle. There’s no use overloading yourself if you have obligations outside of class.

Where to find the best connections

And finally, you want to be careful about choosing the Executive MBA program that has the right connections for you to advance your business career. This isn’t as simple as choosing a business school with the most famous faculty; it’s a matter of researching business schools with professors and lecturers with experience and knowledge that’s relevant to your field of interests. If you have ambitions to found a startup tech company, you want to look at schools with faculty that have successfully founded small business venture in that field. Applying anywhere else would be to miss the most important aspect of graduate education in business: meeting the right people, absorbing their industry advice, and applying it to your own venture.

Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @gmail.com.

Article Source

Getting Rid of Misconceptions About Online Executive MBA Programs

Can online executive MBA programs actually improve your career opportunities? Whatever your specific career goals, you can be sure that the Executive MBA can provide a solid boost for you. However, no one can deny that for many nowadays, there are certain commitments that make its pursuance a bit difficult.

Those with a lot on their plate can still pursue the degree through distance learning, fortunately. Prior to applying for the course, you must of course learn as much as you can. That out of the way, we now move on to some false assumptions people often make about the course.

One often-made assertion is that it is faster and less expensive. Frankly, this is untrue given that most schools charge more or less similar rates for the actual lessons in the two kinds of courses. Even the packages offered by some colleges cannot present major budgetary advantages, at least not if the primary consideration is cost per credit.

Truth be told, there is indeed an element of truth to the statement that Web-based courses let you cut down costs. The true financial benefits of the Net-based classes are found in the fact that you need not pay for things like commuting to campus. And because many online instructors tend to save their studying materials in PDFs, you may skip buying more textbooks.

The typical number of credit hours asked of students is going to be around thirty-six credit hours. Thus, the average length of the course would be about a couple of years. Although there are several accelerated online EMBA options offered, if you encounter a program promising an EMBA in just a short year, you could be coming across a fraudulent school.

The Internet programs also suffer from a regularly cast disparagement that they are easy compared to the regular programs. The actual ease associated with EMBAs is more properly given to their accommodation. This obviously does not mean that you have simpler or more elementary lessons with which to contend.

It is in fact just as hard. The basic course demands and activities, even if adapted for the Internet format, are still the same. The absence of professors from your side may even render it harder than the conventional course if you are not used to studying by yourself.

Of course, there are other ways of communicating with class members, including instant messaging and so on. However, the response rate can be somewhat slow. There can be no doubt that only self-motivated people who do not need to depend on others can prosper in these courses.

One more misconception is that all Web-based courses are equal. One should refrain from holding them all in equal regard. To determine legitimate schools from fraudulent ones, check the school’s accreditation and visit the US Department of Education site if the online school you are eyeing is indeed legit.

It would be irrational to expect every last college in the country to be included in the USDE’s compilation, however. College Navigator can be a good alternative if the school is not on the USDE list. Overall, executive MBA programs are still worthwhile alternatives for those who cannot pursue an EMBA the conventional way.

Education transformed by Distance Learning

Education transformed by Distance Learning

The process of learning is a continued and a complicated process. With the conventional education sector going almost out of spin, it’s the process of learning by distance.

Educate yourself crossing all limits

With the increase in the popularity of distance learning process it is making education affordable to the masses. This will help many students to enter the learning process quite a few years late. The distance learning process helps you to attain the learning program at your own pace at any time of the day. The increase in the online capability has increased the overall reach of the students to a large number of subjects.

There is hardly anything like the professional education, this make courses like the MBA in such a popular mode. The online MBA is one of the most demanding courses in the professional fields.

It helps to nurture the talents of any technically qualified personal in the most effective way. This will help the worker to qualify for improving their talents in various fields. It will also lead to improve their career prospects even further. They could be promoted to the managerial position and their salary will increase almost simultaneously in a progressive manner.

With the increase in the popularity of the distance learning process, the distance education is basically based on the process of spread of the internet technology. This has eventually increased the popularity of the distance education and the most popular among them is the online MBA. The management degree will help an ordinary worker to qualify for the process of the next promotion. The process of education is a rather a continuous process and this makes it popular among the working professionals. This will certainly enhance their talent and their overall experience of the matter of getting the professional degree.

There are various learning institutions who tie up with various industries in order to equip their students with the online MBA. These professionally qualified students can avail this facility through the distance learning process. The distance mode of education will help the students to carry on their studies from the comforts f their home. This is the real joy of distance learning and it can be accessed from any part of the world, just an online connection is needed. With the increasing number of online universities ruling the roost in the world of education, there is really nothing to lose and all to gain in this very process.

Steve Johnson here writes about the various online MBA and how they can prove beneficial in one’s career.

For information on distance learning please visit http://www.fkbconsulting.com

Should small business owners do an MBA?

Could an MBA be the catalyst that your business needs?

There is a definite perception that an MBA is more suited to those who wish to pursue a career in the corporate world and that MBA graduates are the future CEOs of global business. Conversely, there is a perception that entrepreneurism is a built-in characteristic that only the lucky few are born with.

I would argue that the perfect businessperson should have a blend of both entrepreneurial spirit and solid business acumen.

So, what skills could a small business owner learn from an MBA? Here I have highlighted three key benefits that an MBA could provide to a small business owner.

Finance

One of the most important things about being a small business owner is to have a good handle on finance. After all, cash flow is probably the single most challenging aspect of being a small business and ultimately companies go bust because they run out of cash not because sales slip a few percent or the social media marketing campaign didn’t quite do as well as expected.

Finance is a core part of any MBA program and having a solid grasp of finance can only help small business owners to make better informed decisions and evaluate risk more effectively. Being an expert in the finances of your business could be difference between you or your competitor going bust in times of economic strife!

Sales & Marketing

Another core part of the MBA curriculum that would definitely help small business owners is sales & marketing. A lot of people think they know about sales & marketing and that they do it well, but if you ask them to provide proof that an activity or campaign has been successful they are unable to provide sound return on investment (ROI) figures. Measuring sales and marketing activities is key to understanding what works and what doesn’t and in a small business environment, where time and resource is precious, you need to know this!

Networking

The final benefit of doing an MBA (assuming you would not opt for an online MBA) is the opportunity to network with people from a range of different backgrounds and industries. The benefits here are twofold; firstly you may uncover a new customer or strategic business partner and secondly you could learn techniques from other industries and perhaps even be the first to apply these to your own sector.

Barriers

The main barriers to small business owners doing an MBA are obvious – time and money! To address the first problem of time, there are many options now for doing an MBA with many business schools recognising the need to provide flexible courses. Some schools even offer weekend classes to help people who are too busy to attend class during the week. Another option is to look for a course that has a blended curriculum of classroom and online study.

With regards to the second problem of cost, this may not be quite such an issue for a small business owner as it is for somebody who is trying to forge a career in the corporate world. The reason for this is that the requirement to get your MBA from a top business school is not there. If you are a small business owner you can freely choose the MBA that fits your needs and not worry about whether your MBA comes from a top ranking business school like Stanford. If budget is really tight then you could look at a completely online MBA, however, you would lose the benefit of networking opportunities mentioned above.

In summary, don’t exclude the idea of an MBA if you are a small business owner. It could be just the catalyst that your business needs!

Online MBA and its Benefits in Todays Scenario

With so many complexities involved in today’s competitive scenario and people tending to forget about what matters most in our lives – Happiness. In such hectic and troublesome times, we may easily tend to get biased towards any particular aspect of our lives and in the process we forget to pay attention to other aspects of equal importance – Sometimes more.

 This emphasizes that we all need to become good managers in our lives in order to lead a happy and satisfying life. Management does not always mean a professional degree gained in order to get good salary hikes and better status at workplaces and society around us. But management essentially means art of being able to manage all aspects of our lives in such a way so that each gets the attention and time it deserves.

 This ability is getting more and scarce today and rightly so owing to high amount of stress and pressure faced by all of us at workplaces.

In such conditions, we tend to forget about spending quality time with family and that over time enhances nothing but stress on our minds.

 By now, we must have realized the need to become good managers and that is why having a practical approach towards life is so important today. This approach is only attainable by practicing in real time environment that is provided to us in various MBA Courses. However, many of us have constraints over the amount of time and money we may put in to earn a rewarding MBA Degree.

 Keeping in view various such factors, MBA courses in India have been designed such that everyone of us with any sort of constraints has a type of  course available that will still meet our needs and give us the desired result in terms of being a good managers of our lives ranging from Professional, Familiar and personal aspects.

Online MBA is really emerging as a good option now a day as participant does not have to be in the college necessarily in order to get knowledge.

The revolution of Internet comes into act this time and gives Online MBA the edge of simplicity, availability and other benefits over traditional MBA courses. Of course, Traditional on Campus course are more impactful if you do not have any professional or other responsibilities but if you do, then Online MBA is a really good option catering all the needs without having to spend all the time in Campuses. 

Article source

Three Tips to Create Effective Virtual Teams

Virtual teams are on the rise and can be more productive than in-person teams, but it isn’t enough to just equip employees with the technology. Make sure you take these factors into account first.

In today’s virtual environment, airplanes, hotel rooms, coffee shops and practically anywhere along the way can instantly transform into a mobile office — making us more connected, more engaged and better able to collaborate and execute on the fly.

Virtual teams are on the rise, and in some cases can be even more productive than in-person teams, according to research by the American Productivity & Quality Center, a professional consulting organization. As a result, increasing numbers of companies are either migrating to these new types of teams, or creating a hybrid workforce augmenting on-site teams with virtual workers.

Some are tapping into familiar technology such as video conferencing and virtual document sharing, while others are leveraging more complex communication systems, such as online discussion groups and social media. But while technology plays a huge part in closing the distance between virtual teams, these tools alone are not enough to achieve collaboration.

While there are advantages to having virtual teams, talent managers must be aware of certain pitfalls when building and managing virtual teams. Here are the top three, along with ways to avoid them.

Don’t employ a one-size-fits-all approach. Hiring strategies for virtual team members are vastly different than for in-office positions. A virtual workplace requires far more self-reliance and self-motivation than needed for in-office employees. That’s why it’s important to identify the right individuals who demonstrate necessary skills — such as the ability to think independently, make clear decisions and take decisive action when called for, often without direction from higher-ups.

But a talent manager’s work isn’t done once the hire is made. Even if the employee possesses all the skills needed to be successful, additional training may be required to ensure communication across team members is happening, which can vary depending on the individual and the project.

Don’t assume collaboration will happen automatically. More than 60 percent of respondents in a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey on virtual teams reported that no specific training for online collaboration was provided — undoubtedly a hamper on team productivity.

Investing a small amount of time upfront ironing out strategies for proper communication and collaboration in a virtual setting as well as having regular check-ins on how these processes are working will pay big dividends down the road. Regularly setting measurable goals and deliverables, providing timely feedback and creating clear accountability for both virtual and on-site team members are essential building blocks for successful virtual teams.

Don’t think advanced tools will spell success. Many companies make the mistake of assuming the latest, most complex technology will foster the highest level of collaboration and productivity. While online technologies can make working together virtually as effective, or even more effective, than collaborating in-person, complex tools are not always the right ones for the job.

Take transactive memory systems (TMS), for instance, which offer a window into the technical, cultural and tactical knowledge of each team member to help employees solve complex problems by identifying who on the team has the expertise for a particular issue, or who can refer you to the appropriate resource. While they can be immensely helpful, building a TMS requires a significant investment of time and money and may not be the best answer for a company’s needs. In some cases, a simple instant messaging system or Skype call could get you to the same place faster, with far less expense and training and better results.

Working in virtual teams is not without challenges, but can reap significant business benefit when correctly executed. With thoughtful planning, effective communication and an open mind, companies can take their teams to the next level.

Susan E. Cates is president and associate dean of executive development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and executive director of MBA@UNC. She can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com.

Article Source.