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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.

Tags: cheating, graduate, MBA, privacy, student, USA

From the New York Times: US universities are partnering with international schools to add global reach to existing executive MBA (EMBA) programs. UCLA awards EMBA degree to students from National University of Singapore, after the students complete residency programs in Los Angeles, Bangalore, Shanghai and Singapore.

HPU’s EMBA program is conducted entirely in Honolulu. Surely there are universities around the world that would send their EMBA students to Hawaii for a few weeks. The University of North Florida is located in Jacksonville, and according to this article, students are willing to attend UNF’s Global MBA program.

The EMBA degree is expensive, but there are alternatives. Henry Mintzberg picks apart MBA programs in his book, Managers Not MBAs. He makes some excellent points. The MBA is not a cure-all or a golden ticket. I earned my MBA in 1988 with limited work experience. I spent a few years in the late 1990s in industry, and I consult on Oahu. My life is like an never-ending post-doctorate in management.

Tags: California, China, Florida, HPU, India, management, MBA, USA

Business Week has a good article about electronic monitoring and employee absenteeism. There are more IS-related tools that support absence management.

Some companies give their employees flexible policies, like IBM. At other firms like Best Buy, output matters as much or more than hours worked.

Some organizations give employees a single pot of hours to address sick time and vacation time. It’s up to the employee to manage this stash in a reasonable manner.

Bad things happen every day, and usually without respect for anyone’s schedule.

Some of this discussion seems applicable to absenteeism in the classroom. Instructors often speak of students who feigned an illness, a hard drive crash, or a professional crisis as an assignment came due. I usually take students at their word, unless I find out otherwise. Most graduate students want to do the right thing.

On the other hand, I’ve heard of instructors who have feigned illness, personal crises, technology problems or a deadline as an excuse for ungraded papers, sloppy lectures or missed appointments.

It’s difficult for instructors when something goes wrong.

When I was an MBA student, my organizational behavior professor graded one of our paper assignments during a flight – and he then left the graded papers on the plane, without recording the grades. All but one of my students could reprint their papers from a floppy disk and resubmit the assignment for a new grade. The student who handed in a typewritten paper, and didn’t have a backup copy to resubmit, got a C, as I recall.

The following year, our advertising professor died a week before our final presentations. It was a very good course, but we were all surprised and sad when we heard what had happened. The assistant dean came in to watch and grade our groups.

I always build some slack time into my course schedules, so I can compensate when it’s necessary.

Of course, rising expectations has something to do with all of this, too. We expect other people to be available on email or mobile phone when we call.

Tags: ethics, management, MBA, monitoring, student, teaching, university

I wish I was making this story up, but it’s true.

According to the AP, the University of Chicago, one of the world’s leading business schools, will require each MBA applicant to include a four-slide PowerPoint presentation with their portfolio.

Slideshows can be good tools when they’re used well. I hope the Chicago MBA admissions staff will use the slideshows as just one piece of supporting evidence. that seems to be their intent, according to associate dean Rose Martinelli: the slideshow is just “four blank pieces of paper” that lets an applicant have a broader canvas to state their case. I do agree with John Koetsier that PowerPoint is a “traditional application”.  Grade school students can build a basic PPT file, after all.

Perhaps applicants should try building something more elegant, like a well-constructed wiki site or a blog on a specific topic.

What I fear is a mad rush of adoption, as other business schools ask applicants to tack on a PPT file. PowerPoint slides without speakers notes or supporting documentation can be worse than useless. A show full of overly animated slides and random fonts won’t impress me much.

Tags: Chicago, Illinois, MBA, PPT, student, teaching, university, USA

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Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others. - Pierre Abelard

Hawaii Pacific University has selected the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition) as the style and formatting standard in its graduate-level programs and courses, including the MSIS and MBA.

Remember that the 5th edition of the APA Publication Manual is the best source for information. Students should buy their own copy of the manual and use it during their academic program. I recommend the spiral-bound version, which is available at Amazon.com. This version lays flat, unlike the university bookstore’s paperback version. Of course, one could buy the paperback edition and have it rebound at a copying or office supply store.

• APA updated guidelines on citing and listing electronic references. Some of these guidelines have changed since the 5th edition was published, so check this page. This includes a June 2007 publication that addresses email, Web pages, blogs, comments, YouTube.
• Errata for the 5th edition of the APA Publication Manual. There were some typographical and content errors in the initial printings of the manual. This is a good document to print and place inside your manual.

I check written assignments in my courses for APA compliance. APA formatting helps students write assignments that are easy for me to read and understand.

Usage of the APA manual also offers good lessons in the fine art of RTFM (reading the fine manual). As a manager or employee, you may be expected to write documents that conform to your organization’s style manual.

If you’re really lucky, you may have to select or write your organization’s style manual. This may be more karma than you need.

Evidence of careful APA formatting also indicates to me that the student has paid attention to the assignment requirements, and didn’t try to write their assignment at the last minute.

Therefore, I sometimes return poorly written or formatted assignments without a grade.

Here are some links on APA formatting. Students may use these sites as needed to supplement the course materials.

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My own APA formatting guides

• (PDF) I use this table when I’m grading papers. It has examples and page references that help me find sections in the APA manual.
• (PPT) This is a slide show that I’ve shown in class when I discuss the APA formatting requirements
• (PDF) Here are some example citations for an academic journal article. This document focuses on how to cite articles found in EBSCO, including the “persistent link”

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• The HPU Tutoring and Testing Center has a page of APA resources, including tutorials and guides.
• (PDF) HPU Library Guide 19 has an excellent discussion on academic honesty and plagiarism.
• This guide from Wooster University is helpful.
• Plonsky’s APA guide is an excellent resource with many examples of important APA formatting rules.
• Douglas Degelman and Martin Harris run an excellent site on APA formatting.
  • Degelman & Harris’ APA template for Microsoft Word
  • Example of an undergraduate research proposal for psychology majors. MSIS students may find this helpful for capstone projects that involve experiments or human subjects.
  • Example of APA title page.
  • Example of APA abstract page.
  • Example of APA formatted headings.
• Lesley university’s web site on APA style
  • (PDF) My document summarizing the Lesley University document below, with additional instructions for MSIS students.
  • (PDF) Lesley’s University’s 2002 PDF document on annotated bibliographies.

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Web services for APA formatting

The HPU Library tab in Campus Pipeline has a link for the APA Citation Maker.

BibMe lets users search for articles, books and other resources, and then it formats the entry. It seems to do a good job with books – just enter the ISBN number, and BibMe creates a citation that can be copied into a document.

Here’s an example for a book I helped write a few years ago – the ISBN number is 0782140815 and BibMe’s result is as follows:

Dulaney, E., Lane, P., & Sodeman, W. (2002). CIW: Foundations Study Guide. New York: Sybex.

Pretty close to the mark, I’d say. Remember that you must select “APA” from the drop-down list, and then press “Download”, save the .RTF file and then open the file to see the formatting.

The IS 6100 textbook for 2007 has the ISBN 9780073511542 – and here’s BibMe’s result below.

O’Brien, J. (2006). Management Information Systems. Guilford: Mcgraw-Hill College.

What’s wrong with this result? Plenty.

1. The primary author’s name, as listed on the book itself, is James A. O’Brien.
2. The co-author’s name is missing. George M. Marakas deserves some credit, after all.
3. The publisher’s name is not correct. It’s McGraw-Hill Irwin.
4. The publisher’s city is not correct: it should be Boston, not Guilford. Perhaps BibMe is retrieving the UK version of the text?
5. The publication date is 2008, not 2006.

So we need to edit BibMe’s suggestion as follows:

O’Brien, J. A. & Marakas, G. M. (2008). Management Information Systems. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Even then, it’s still not formatted correctly! Keep in mind that the above examples are missing their hanging indents.

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Microsoft Word templates for APA formatting

There are several Word templates available that claim to do APA formatting. You can find several on Google. Most of the “free” templates aren’t very good. Some of them may contain viruses and trojans.

One benefit is that these templates have built-in styles to handle headings. Some templates can also format title pages and citations.

Some of my students like Perrla. I haven’t tried it, but it appears to have a good feature set.I use a Word template from Reference Point Software. The template is very accurate, and it’s inexpensive. No, I won’t send you a copy. I used to write software, and sometimes a copyright is a good thing to have.

I have seen students try to “borrow” this product by copying a DOC file from another student. (I like to check the File, Properties dialog to determine who created the file.) All the students will get are the styles. Hey, you get what you pay for in this world.

The full version of the Reference Point software is a template that adds APA menu choices to Word and WordPerfect. These menu choices can make the template much easier to use.

The RPS online help section (Java required) includes instructions for building a Table of Contents, which is not discussed in the APA manual, but is required for the final MSIS thesis and graduate applied project papers.

Even the developers of these templates acknowledge there is no substitute for the APA Publication Manual. After all, these companies wouldn’t have a product if the manual wasn’t so widely used.

Also, it is always possible for a user to override or change the Word template settings, which may make the document noncompliant with APA standards.

The APA sells its own document formatting software, APA Style Helper. I have a report that the latest version works better than previous filter-based builds, but I haven’t tried this software myself.

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If you’ve made it this far down the page, and you read everything else, congratulations to you. This document is a bit dry and crunchy, but it’s helpful for my graduate students.If you found this page on Google, you’re probably looking for quotes from one of my favorite comic strips ever,
Calvin and Hobbes.

Calvin on writing

• The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
• Verbing weirds language.
• That’s the whole problem with science. You’ve got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.
• Calvin: I’m a genius, but I’m a misunderstood genius.
  Hobbes: What’s misunderstood about you?
  Calvin: Nobody thinks I’m a genius.
• If you do the job badly enough, sometimes you don’t get asked to do it again.
• The only skills I have the patience to learn are those that have no real application in life.

Tags: APA, help, HPU, MBA, MSIS, research, teaching, writing