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The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which develops and administers the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) that is used in the MBA admissions process, has taken over the domain name Scoretop.com as of 20 June 2008, shut down the web site, and obtained a hard drive from the ISP provider containing Scoretop subscriber information.

GMAC alleges that Lei Shi and other participants in Scoretop provided 6000 paid subscribers with access to authentic, live GMAT exam questions. GMAC has canceled one person’s GMAT score in late 2007, and may cancel other scores if a forensic examination of the drive and server logs yields a list of GMAT exam takers.

David Wilson, president and CEO of GMAC, claims the organization will not “cancel a score where we think there’s a shadow of a doubt.” But GMAC’s investigation has left some potential and current MBA students wondering if or when they will be questioned.

See these Business Week articles by Louis Lavelle called GMAT Scandal Claims First Casualty and GMAT Cheating Scandal: Answers From GMAC for more details.

From BusinessWeek, here’s an article with 10 tips for delivering effective presentations. this felt like a timely article, as students are starting to deliver presentations in their courses around this time of year.

The author uses Steve Jobs and his product announcements as an example, but many of these tips will work well for any presentation.

My favorite points on the list are:

1) Set the theme. Let the audience know what they will learn from the talk.

4) Use meaningful numbers. Discuss ratios, percentages and results in ways that the audience can understand. Never assume that the audience will do the analysis themselves. I sometimes hear graduate students claim that a company is doing well because it is earning a profit. My follow-up questions focus on their evidence for that claim.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Product announcements sometimes become awkward when the technology malfunctions. Avoid fancy transitions and tools that take extra preparation, support or time to use.

10) Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. A presentation is a performance. Most of the audience members have delivered presentations themselves, but they won’t cut the presenter much slack. The best content and slides cannot save a boring or poorly delivered presentation.

Here’s an interesting article about an academic study that affirms a popular belief – that eBay is a good place to find bargains. According to this summary on ZDnet, eBay shoppers saved an estimated US$8 billion dollars in 2004. The study by Wolfgang Jank and Galit Shmueli will be published in a future issue of the Journal of Information Systems Research.

Graduate students should make a habit of reading at least one peer-reviewed article a week, especially if their degree program requires a thesis or professional paper.

eBay’s next CEO, John Donahoe, hopes to bring sellers and buyers back to the service by offering better search options and a more secure marketplace, as I discussed on 23 January 2008.

As The Register points out, eBay’s lower listing fees are balanced by a hike in the final sales fees. While it will cost sellers list to relist an item, sellers will pay eBay more money if and when that item sells.

Michael Wesch of Kansas State University produced this video commentary on classroom learning. I found it interesting. I haven’t been in a “cattle-call hall” since my undergraduate years. I don’t miss these large classrooms at all. They’re cold and impersonal.

I do enjoy teaching online and in our friendly small classrooms at HPU! Twenty-four students seems like the right size for a graduate class.

Multiple choice exams are fine, when used in moderation. But objective questions cannot measure mastery of a subject, especially when the textbook publisher’s test bank is available through Google.

I give writing assignments because managers must develop excellent written communication skills. The Internet has not changed that requirement.

Thanks to Abe Gruber (Facebook profile, personal site) for this link!

‘Tis the season for final papers and exams. As time grows short in the semester, I’ve seen more of my graduate students cite Wikipedia in their papers.

Some students have noticed that I cite Wikipedia in my blog posts. I include links to Wikipedia so that students can find a quick, reasonable discussion of a specific topic.

But that doesn’t mean that I will let graduate students cite Wikipedia in their assignments. I wouldn’t let undergraduate students cite Wikipedia, but I do hold graduate students to a higher set of standards. Masters students should be able to find, assess and use reliable, authoritative references for their assignments.

Here’s a good response on this issue. Jorge shares my opinion that the reference lists in some Wikipedia articles can be a good source of reading material for students. This practice is similar to using the reference list of a good textbook or an academic article to find additional readings on a topic. I encourage students to do this, as long as students find, read and cite the sources.

Wikipedia is not a textbook, dictionary or paper encylcopedia. Wikipedia is a user-created database of articles on a wide variety of topics. As I’ve mentioned on 7 March, Wikipedia is, at best, a tertiary or third-level reference. Wikipedia articles should not include any original, primary or first-level research.

That means that all Wikipedia articles should be based on secondary research.

TurnItIn.com does check student papers against Wikipedia articles, which helps deter students from using Wikipedia as a reference. Jessica Farris wrote a brief article on QuestionCopyright.org in which she mentioned some of the deterrent qualities of TurnItIn.com. Bill Zeller discussed the legal status of TurnItIn.com’s indexing in this article in one of his course blogs. Zeller also refers to this 13 March 2007 BusinessWeek article about TurnItIn.com.