thinkPhD

As you know from my writings, I wear many hats…mom, teacher, employee, student, wife, blogger. I also wear a hat you may not know about – I am an expert over on AllExperts.com . You can ask a question of an expert in a particular genre like home/garden, real estate, hobbies, and money. The site purports to be the largest and oldest Q&A site on the Internet. In order to become an expert, you must apply and go through an elimination process.

I am an expert in Continuing/Adult Education and Distance Learning. I receive many questions, some of which are bogus but many are from individuals concerned with receiving a good solid answer. Over time, I have noticed that most of the inquiries now come from India. A number of Indian citizens are looking at getting an online education from schools in the USA. Some are mis-informed, thinking that every school has online programs. Although many do, I would not recommend them. Some ask how to get American scholarships to pay completely for college thinking there is a government program to pay for all college here in the USA – most of these questions come from those with undergraduate degrees. The reader knows that scholarship money for masters and doctorates is hard to come by! I also get questions about which type of program to choose based on the student’s other degree(s). Yes, many times that is plural degrees.

From USA students, I answer questions over and over about paralegal training. There is a particular school that advertises their program on TV. I receive many questions about that program, which by the way is not accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA). Less than 300 of the 1000 paralegal programs in the US are accredited. Coming in second are questions about medical transcriptionist schools.

Doesn’t it strike you odd that paralegal and medical transcriptionist questions are coming from citizens of this country, while questions about masters and doctorates are coming from another country?

I worked on assignment 2 again yesterday and it is almost complete. Over the course of the last week or two, I decided on a topic and started research in the NCU library. I printed out a number of journal articles and read them (of course!). This assignment is basically a “read the chapters, decide on a topic, write a 10+ page research paper.” Note that this is not a report – it is research. I take that distinction seriously and try to gather information from previous journal papers and develop a new combination of their research. I often find conflicting or poorly done research, or that from which conclusions were drawn without secure analysis. Generally, my References page is at least two pages long. In this paper, I actually take a disparate side from our text. There are statements in the text in reference to market follower strategies, such as, “Followership is often not a rewarding path” (Kotler & Keller, 2006, p. 361).  Current research does not support this – in fact, a market follower often overtakes and eclipses a market pioneer! Kotler and Keller are partially correct in their assessment that “Many companies prefer to follow rather than challenge the market leader” (p. 360). The sticking point is that following is always a CHALLENGE to the leader because any competition is just that – competition. 

The paper is done except for the introduction (which I always do last), proofreading and final touch-up. After that, we will see what Dr. Rose thinks about my research.

I finished and turned in my first assignment for MGT5002. I am so far behind in this course! There are three assignments and one down, two to go. I have done the preliminary research for assignment 2 and will work on this now. I got a great grade on the first assignment so I suppose I interpreted the assignment correctly. I am always nervous when I have a new class and new instructor!