Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Welcome to BA 101, the world of business in 11 weeks. We will meet weekly via zoom and have team projects so regular attendance at our weekly class is required. We'll move quickly, learn a great deal, and have some fun. The textbook, Exploring Business, published by Flatworld, is required.

All the quizzes will be open book and online in D2L. You will be able to take them more than once if you want to. Most deadlines in the class are flexible but if you follow the recommended due dates your work load will be nicely spread out over the entire term.

We'll meet once a week on Thursdays days via zoom for two hours, 10am-Noon. A typical class will be the highlights of two chapters, breakout rooms for small group conversations and a short time at the end for team projects. Regular attendance is required and vital to productive team work. You may find it most convenient to meet with team members right after or before class. The class zoom room will be available. Plan to have at least one meeting with your team per week outside of class. Whether you meet in person or online is a team decision.

Read what's in D2L, especially the Syllabus. Pay attention to announcements, the calendar, the assignments, the discussions and the chapter quizzes. There is no final exam.

Under Assignments, you'll see individual assignments and two team projects:

1) a team slide presentation on a business ethics issue of your team's choosing and,

2) movie review & research paper and presentation of your paper to the class.

I prefer that these assignments are done with 2 - 4 people in a team.  I will create teams at the beginning of the course that will do the Ethics assignment and the Movie assignment. Students may suggest alternative arrangements. 

One of the learning objectives for the assignments is working with others to make a plan and execute a plan. You will need to decide together how you will communicate (e.g. in-person, text, email, Snapchat, phone, Google Docs, Trello, Discord, etc), how you will share documents to do editing and proof reading (e.g. Google Docs, Trello, Discord), and what your schedule for getting the work done will be. You will decide "Who is going to do What by When."  I expect error-free writing so build in time for lots of proof reading. 

Take responsibility for the assignments, help each other to do your best and share the work load fairly. My assessment, and the grading, will be for you as a team and as an individual. Bonus points may be given for work above and beyond my expectations. Individuals who contribute very little to the assignment will be graded accordingly. 

Plan to turn on your camera and audio in the zoom class during the group conversations, it makes a friendlier and more supportive conversation for everyone. Upload a photo into your zoom account (which is free) for those times when your camera is off. Plus, setting yourself up with decent lighting and adequate sound now, will prepare you for interviews and other important zoom calls in your future.

This is a remote class with a weekly zoom session so a functioning camera and audio is required and will be used frequently in each class.