What graduate students say...

What graduate students in the EMBA and MBA courses are saying about their experience this summer in the HYBRID (part face to face and part online) Marketing Management course led by me, Dr. Mims. Replies posted here.

Ph.D. awarded by College of Business, University of North Texas

Finally, on May 31st it is official. Doctor of Philosophy in Marketing awarded by the AACSB program at the College of Business. My thanks to Dr.'s Sager, Lewin and Ignatow for their support.

Awarded $1,000 scholarship

Hurray! Applied for several scholarships. Received letter this week for being awarded a $1,000 graduate scholarship! This is the second scholarship award in 2 years. The first was $1,500. To assist my effort in grant, proposal and scholarship writing I attended a course in grant and proposal writing taught by Dr. Ryan Boettger. I would encourage everyone to follow http://rboettger.drupalgardens.com/ Hope this encourages my students!

Hurray my Copyright Certificate from the U.S.Copyright Office Arrived! Recently I filed copyright protection requests on 3 creative works. These creative works are of particular importance to protect and in reading the copyright protection requirements you must HAVE a certificate to take action on a 3rd party. Now I am not an attorney, but the general public has access to read the legislated criteria for protecting creative work seems very clear: Under Chapter 4 § 411 . Registration and civil infringement actions it states.. "(b), no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title. " So it would seem to truly protect a creative work, filing a copyright is necessary. I have done so recently on 3 creative works. Both my entrepreneurial and internet marketing/social media classes can benefit by a quick trip to the U.S. Patent and the U.S. Copyright sites available on the web. http://www.copyright.gov/

Awards for $1,000 EU and $500 EU ...Use your Business Planning Skills...

Emerald Group Publishing Limited, in association with Student Competitions, is offering three cash prizes for business plans that contribute to the development of library electronic resources by analysing and developing practices which will increase online usage.

The winning project should actively promote and uphold the use of Library Electronic Holdings.

Prize
There will be one award of £1,000 for the winning business plan, and two awards of £500 each for highly-commended runners up.

Winners will also receive a certificate and a winners’ logo to attach to correspondence. Ideas from the winning business plan will be disseminated to libraries globally to support the management of electronic holdings and the communities which use them.

Eligibility
To be eligible for the award, the lead researcher must be a current student or have completed a course of study no earlier than 2006.

Submission requirements
Full details of submission requirements and judging criteria can be viewed online at the link below: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/research/awards/digital_usage.htm

Applications must be submitted online using the application form at: http://ww2.emeraldinsight.com/awards/usage.htm

The closing date for applications is 27 January 2012.

Please pass this information on to anyone you may know that would be interested in applying. These prestigious awards can provide a great fillip to researchers about to embark on their academic careers.

If you have any questions regarding these awards please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards,
Emma

Emma Stevenson
External Relations Executive
Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Tel +44 (0) 1274 785198
Fax +44 (0) 1274 785200
estevenson@emeraldinsight.com
http://www.emeraldinsight.com

Sharon Green, former student, writes about Teaching & Technology

Sharon Green, M.Ed., a former student has written an article in the October issue of Frisco Style Magazine that includes issues we are all thinking about when it comes to teaching and using technology. Hope you may take a moment, see how one former student is contributing in education by reading this article by Sharon.

Congratulations Sharon! We are so very proud of you!

How far will retail customer's travel to your store?

McGraw-Hill publishes one of the few Retailing textbooks that contains a report from the North American Retail Highlights, a study conducted by Colliers (Colliers.com) that helps provide NORMAL DRIVING (trade area) DISTANCE (remember the 80/20 rule) for distance traveled to the retail store.

Here is the summary from Chapter 7 of the McGraw/Hill Retailing text by Levy&Weitz:
TYPE of Structure: Square Feet Size Trade Area (effectivenesslimit)
Free Standing (single units) varies 3 - 7 miles!
Think Kohl's, gas stations, 7 / 11

Neighborhood/community
shopping centers 30,000-350,000 3 - 7 miles!!!!
Usually grocery stores plus some

Power center
(Stonebriar or Grapevine Mills) 250,000 - 600,000 5 - 10 miles!!!

Enclosed Malls 400,000 - 1,000,000 5 - 25 miles!!!
Willowbrook, Galleria

Theme/Festival centers 80,000 - 250,000 25- 75 miles!!
Cabella's, Bass Pro, IKEA

This list makes you think about all the mail you receive, all the printed advertisements you see in newspapers-- Wasted! Business owners that are not combining the power of knowing their target with the power of knowing how effective their location is as far as its potential for physical reach, often winding up closing their doors fairly quickly. So what if you have a truly unique resale shop, if you just leased a space in the neighborhood center with the grocery store, chances are just the neighbors will know you are there and frankly all the advertising in the world would not cause your target to drive to see you at that neighborhood location.

Think and plan the way they do on Top Shot, its not just the aim, its the conditions at the location as well!

Win $1,000 value from a text book publisher!

This un-believable but possibly viral as a marketing ploy. This very well know text book publisher is actually encouraging college humor about 'slacking' at school. Wanted my students to be completely aware of this offer to win a value of $1,000 from a text book source. Hope you find this both funny and with any luck, you'll win.

Attendance.Evidence.that.Relates.to.Student.Grades

All of us struggle with making time for an appointment, making time for family, scheduling every day life, work and unforeseen demands upon our time.

Time is something that we cannot save, we can only spend our time.

This semester I am teaching a "Hybrid" course in Retailing. According to a study by Guiterrez & Russo "Who Makes the 'A' Grade", a Greater proportion of Hybrid course students made 'A's' versus a full-time traditional face to face course and even more so than 100% online course. It appears that Hybrid course formats (a mix of face to face and internet instruction) is producing more "A's" out of a group of students. The format with the least amount of "A's" is a 100% internet course. This study was published in the International College Teaching Methods & Styles Journal-2004 Vol-1, #3.

Also, when you consider the Guiterrez & Russo study along with the study produced by Cheung & Kan (2002), where Chuen & Kan found that a consistend predictor of student (grades) performance is attendance in class, this would seem to indicate that attendance, at some level, is critical to making the "A" grades.

There are a few other factors involved with making the "A" grades. Clearly attendance is one important factor.

Hope this provides you some help when it comes to scheduling your priorities. I know myself that producing income is important, my hope is that this bit of research may help some students with their choices for attending class.

Learning to Beef-Up Powerpoint Presentations

I am so fortunate. By the good fortune of having a classmate of mine (yes another Ph.D. student) recommend I take a non-degree course in Technical Communication (yes that also means I did not need this class) I have a wonderful opportunity to learn how to write Grants and Proposals! The Professor is an amazing communicator AND - 'bonus' experience for me,... my professor has a blog and his blog has all this wonderful information on grant sources! Finally, my professor's blog also has terrific links for learning power point. As an advanced user of powerpoint, I now feel there is so much more to learn that I am demoted to an intermediate user state! This means that my presentations can be kicked up to the next level by including customized graphics - all without having to learn CS4 or CS5 (for those of you that are not familiar these are the Photoshop suite of applications).

I will be sharing the grant links soon...
This blog links to the powerpoint instruction source.

Essay Questions for Entrepreneurs

What do women and minorities that start a business need to do to use their "women and minority" ownership status? Is it automatic to be recognized as a "women or minority" owned business, if not why not?

No, it is not ‘automatic’ for a business, any business, proprietor, franchises or corporations, to be recognized as a women or minority owned business. Reason is that there are both FEDERAL and STATE requirements to be labeled with this distinction. To use this distinction without obtaining the correct certification could be ‘FALSE ADVERTISING’ and lead to a host of problems for the business owner.

The benefit to being ‘certified’ as a minority /women owned business is that it 1) opens up particular funding/grants available and 2) permits the certified business the privilege of bidding under this criteria a local, county, state and federal levels for contracts (sell them supplies, be contractors).

According to MWBE.com, to be able to use their "women and minority" status, they first must go through a certification process in order to establish that the business is actually owned, operated and controlled by the applicants (who must meet their criteria). They then must complete an application which is then reviewed.
The owner must prove that they met the qualifications such as the owner must be able to run the business financially, at least 51% of employees must be women under SBA guidelines. Just because a woman is in the corporate driver’s seat, doesn't mean that she owns the company.
Both the SBA and SBI (small business institute) has information on businesses to help obtaining their certification.



How can you use your Primary Target description to influence your advertising, promotion and publicity?


The primary target’s characteristics are the Criteria to use for selecting all promotion, advertising, communication style and design. This means that that no sentence is written and not an advertisement or promotion is planned, without first considering the characteristics of the profile. For example, if your business is a Wedding Consultant, you would want to advertise in bridal magazines, high end department store flyers, photographers etc... rather than advertise in flyers that might reach the general public such as Target or Wal Mart.
As a business owner, you need to reach just Your Customers. Every dollar spent on advertising that ‘overshoots’ the target is wasted CASH!




How can a start up business use their state’s Workforce Commission? (in Texas this is the Texas Workforce Commission).
* Post a Job
* Unemployment, Labor Law and Appeals Information
* Tax Information and Transactions
* Shared Work Unemployment Compensation Plan
* Job Market and Economic Data
* Laws and Requirements for Employers
* Civil Rights and Discrimination
* Employee Training Programs and Funding

Blackboard.9

This will be a challenge for all of us teaching Summer Courses.
While change is inevitable, and if we are not changing we may likely be dead to improvement, there is a bit of a hiccup, if you will, about moving to Blackboard 9 at our University.

Summer courses are usually fast, down and dirty, flights of content experience giving students the tree-top view of the subject. Usually these courses start and are over in about 30 days.

Adding to this speed of sound approach for delivering content, we are moving to a new Blackboard Version (V9). While I am excited about all the new bells and whistles in v9, my concern, from a business perspective is this: Students will not have access to v9 until the first day of their summer class.

I can just see the train wreck about to happen. Hope that I am terribly wrong about this, but the basis for my forecast comes from my own experience in giving some harmless new online request to my own students in the spring. My hope is that students will ask content questions of me about their course work, not Blackboard questions.

My plan is now, keep it simple for content delivery of my summer courses. To help out, I am including audio, even flip videos, to help ease some transitional pain so that the critical content that needs to sink in can be maintained.

Meanwhile, back on my own studies, I am heartily joining my own cohort of Marketing classmates for a round of discussions to prep for the Comprehensive exams that we will be 'sitting' for in August.

Why group projects?

Quote to share with students using the wiki for group projects this semester in all my courses:
"students will take ownership of information
if they practice using it" (Wright, Bitner, and Zeithaml 1994).

Results of Hiring Companies: New Poll Results from the Graduate Management Admissions Council

Use this link to find the current poll results from the Graduate Management Admissions Council interviews with hiring companies. The results provide insight as to the level of experience and education desired by firms (mostly U.S.). Insights are provided on the impact the economy has had on the educational profile of hiring.

What is a Web Browser & Why Can't I Change the Wiki ?

In my hope to have students, especially distance students, participate in group projects I spent dozens of man hours creating an “academic site” for my students this semester to use and utilize online tools such as a “wiki”.

While I was not naïve in thinking all would go smoothly, I have been naïve in assuming “digital natives” may need help in recognizing how browser technology works.  To help students (esp. distance students) this semester, I’ve emphasized the preference to call me or text me so that we can work together on any technological kinks.

What I am finding is there are some simple “digital native” assumptions that I have imbued and obviously need to rethink the normality of a digital native.

1-Web browsers.

A brow (frames the eye); a web browser is the frame for your web page.   Many “brands” of web browser’s exist, the link for this post provide a lengthy accounting.

2-Intranet versus Extranet

When at work, it is a private – internal networking of computers sending stuff, data, emails, etc. back and forth.  It is important to keep company information confidential; these are usually contained within a private network or private intranet.

Being in “Blackboard”, or, using accessing Blackboard with your university of choice, is the same as being at an employer’s place of business. This is a private network.

Any time you want to ‘click’ and follow a ‘link’ in a Blackboard, it is important to be consciously aware if your ‘browser’ is still using Blackboard as the frame for your page.  If so, you are still within a private, locked down, secure area.

Many web pages outside this private area, will not work.

3-Can’t Open Document

Sometimes I run into this issue myself as well.  On a completely different subject, unrelated to web browsers, private networks, browsing discussed above, I have found that about 10-15% of digital natives appear to need assistance with “file types”. File types give you a good indication of what application you may need to open the file. A .docx for example is usually an indication of an MSWord 2007 XML type file. 

An easy solution is usually to a) determine what type of application is needed to open and b) go the home page for that application and find support for Free Downloads to READ ONLY the file you need to open.

My hope is this lengthy post becomes helpful not only to my students, but to other students, digital natives (and digital immigrants) equally.  Regards, Prof. T

Loosing.Gaining, Surface Web versus Deep Web tools.

Adding more links and functionality.
Today I was having withdrawals about UNT Library services no longer providing "Federated Research" function link when looking for journal articles.  What is important to know about "Federated Research" functions is that it is a means (a tool) for obtaining what is known as 'deep web' systems.  These 'deep web' systems, (like a Federated Research), allow researchers (or surfers) to hunt in the caverns of the world wide web, within systems laying under the crust (a.k.a surface web).  These caverns (as I like to call them) contain open access to library systems, open access company libraries and reporting ( I used to LOVE going to the AT&T/SBC library in St. Louis, MO). In these open systems, lying deep under the surface of the web, are vast amounts of information just waiting to have your light shine on them (err-go my term cavern).

By loosing the 'Federated Search' function at my university's library, I gained the knowledge that other publicly available deep web systems and tools exist for us to use free of charge.

One of these public, deep web search applications I have posted below as a gadget for you.  My hope is this helps facilitates for my students 1) a means of accessing what you are looking for, and, 2) an example of "there is always another way to try finding what you are looking to find".
Prof.T

Great Article on Importance of Spelling

Students, this is a great example of how poor spelling can cost you money!

Wiki.Access.Created

Creating.the.Blog

First time to create a blog.  The desire is to provide students an engaging experience using the most current up-to-date tools as to prepare for a future in marketing on and off line.