Comments I hear range from, “I can’t stand these lectures” to “I can’t stand all these textbooks” and everything in between. To add to what Gary said, one of the big lessons I am learning along the way in this program is - what are my best learning modes? And how can I teach to people who have other learning modes?

I find the blog method very instructive. But I am also conditioned as a result of reading online forums for 12 years on a daily basis. Other people tell me the blog posts are too long or to dense. I can respect either view.

So to add some usefulness to this short post, I would like to offer some simple advice for anyone who does not like blogs as a learning method.

1. Keep your paragraphs short. If your typical paragraph has eight sentences, try using four.

2. Keep your sentences short. Short sentences are easy to read.

3. Use bullet points or lists.

4. Separate paragraphs with full carriage returns (hit the enter key twice).

5. Use Firefox, with the ’spell checking in forms’ option turned on. This saves time over spell checking in word, then copy-pasting.

6. I would advise using bold and italics, but find the allowed html in this blog a bit odd to use. Let’s try bold as a test and perhaps some italics.

-Rob

However, for business, it is extremely valuable to teach ourselves how to do accounting, finance, organizational behavior, economics, and myriads of other subjects because we are learning how to become masters of our subjects. I can tell you that learning how to do accounting is much easier than learning how to do microwave engineering. It is more feasible for me to learn on my own in subjects like business, where experience matters more than theory. It is expected of students in many other MBA programs across the country to do their own research in their field of interest.

Now, I understand that Prof. Carr has said this general management MBA is more like a super BS, as there’s not as much flexibility to specialize in a certain field (ie. study organizational behavior in great detail, as a focus of research). However, this program lets people, with little experience in business, have a shot at MBA level coursework without necessarily having a business undergraduate degree. I’m very grateful for that!

You get an automatic A and will graduate with honors. (Just kidding … you will still need to earn it.)

But thanks for the kind words. Our faculty, who work very hard, don’t hear kudos like this enough!

I found Michael’s points not in contradiction to what Dr. Carr said in the original post. Lectures are mainly deductive learning–one-directional passage of knowledge of information–not a very effective learning method. What Michael pointed out was essentially in the spirit of Dr. Carr’s words: when classroom is combined with not just lecture, but also interactive activities, students are to learn better.

I find Cal Poly education extremely valuable because the emphasis on the application, aka do-by-learning aspect, as almost all my classes stress teamworks, projects, and practical skills. In summer courses, we attempted to commercialize real outside technologies, and presented to venture capitalists.

In accounting, instead of wasting time in lecture, we watch lecture at our own paces and utilize the valuable classroom time to doing actual cases and pick professor’s brain.

In business law, we studied 1000+ pages worth of cases; In Org Beh, every assignment is team based and in working with people we reflectively learned about our own behaviors. In all classes we learn about teamwork, collaboration, resource management, leadership, interpersonal skills….things that are actually useful in workplace, and incredibly beneficial for external motivators like myself.

In essences, I think I have learned more knowledges and common senses from half year at Cal Poly MBA than all my 18 years of formal education combined. Cal Poly also helped me to find the best job in the world, to compete with students from places like Berkeley and Michigan, and even quadrupled my salary in less than a year…I simply cannot praise more about the quality of our program and faculty, or express enough my indebtedness to this institute and the career service.

You raise a good point, and important distinction.

Facilitation, live or other, is important, and the research supports the value of that.

The research on the model of (even) the engaging, charismatic prof-lecture-notes-exam, however, is pretty damning in terms of student mastery and retention of content beyond the quarter or semester the class is taken in (i.e., where lecture and note taking is the sole or nearly exclusive mode of delivery). Where this model is coupled closely with another type of activity and learning, then the results are much better. In my own case, I really can’t tell you one thing I remember content wise from my undergraduate days at a decent school, which was traditional lecture (only) and midterm and final exam — and I was a good, diligent student in college!