Leadership and Influence

Hello everyone, I hope my review will be useful for you. I took this course because I needed micro MBA. I can say that I took many courses on the edX platform, and there is no one that would disappoint me so much. I still do not understand how edX allows to have such low-quality content on their platform. I will tell in detail what this course is and what Robert H. Smith School of Business by University of Maryland is.

I'll start with the education program. If you take this course, be prepared that you will learn nothing. People who take the MBA program are already managers.

Lectures consist of videos from 45 seconds to 3 minutes. This is the length of lectures in the program. There will be a minimum amount of text material, a few paragraphs of the theory and few cases. It will take no more than one hour to complete one module. The material is not structured.

Further, the most interesting. The course program ended on December 15th. According to the schedule, the exam was to begin from December 30 to January 5. But that did not happen. The course organizers postpone the exam for the period from January 12 to January 20. From January 6, the practice final exam was to begin. It was not indicated that the exam would be proctored. Moreover, the conditions for passing the exam appear on the eve of the opening. And organizers of the course said that you can’t use your notes, you can use only notes that are made on the edX platform.

This caused a flurry of students' indignation, because any normal person understands that such rules should be reported at the beginning of the course, and not the day before the exam. It took me about 5 hours to transfer my notes to the edX platform. And a few days later a letter comes from the organizers that they generously allow students to use their paper notes. Further, a separate story deserves my struggle for the opportunity to pass the exam. I will describe it only briefly. I wanted to pass a practice final exam on the day it opened on January 6th. But I could not do this because the program gave one error after another.

I had a long messaging with 4 different “responsible” structures, including course organizers, edX support and even developers of the proctoring program. The practice final exam had to be passed before January 10th. Problems could not be fixed until January 12th. And after 6 days of a discussion with technical support, it was finally found out that the problem was in the organizer of the course, which made a mistake in the beginning. (If someone needs, I can provide all letters, if someone believes that I'm misrepresenting facts, moreover you can go to the Discussion of this course in the Final Exam section, you can see how many students had problems with the exams (both of them, practice final and final) related to the organizers of the course, I also have screenshots of this topic).

Further, the course organizers write a letter in which they recommend passing the final exam closer to the opening date, because the exam has many questions with a short answer and students will have a chance to challenge the teacher’s decision about their answers’ evaluation. I am writing this review on January 31th. I remind you that the exam was closed on the 20th. So the results of final exam are still hidden! I have already received a certificate, but I still can not see my answers.

I passed the exam on January 15th. On January 17th I got a message that my exam was passed and I can see my results on the Progress page. This is most of all, because such a page doesn’t exists in this course!!! And again I contacted the course support service, and their answer was that they are now working on the development of this page. They work AFTER completion of the course!!!!

When the progress page appeared, I saw my preliminary result of 41% (to get a certificate you need at least 70%). I was very surprised at this result. The course organizers wrote that the results are preliminary and the final result will be visible on January 27th. Interestingly, it was possible to pay for the next course in the micro MBA line just until January 27th.

When I finally got my result, which suddenly became 79%, I could no longer pay for the next course. And I again turned to the organizers with a request to give me the opportunity to pay for the verified track as I was waiting for the results of the previous course, and they refused.

Summarizing all the above. Colleagues, the MBA program prepares managers and senior managers. So, before taking the program of this university, ask yourself WHAT these people can teach you, if they even cannot organize THEMSELVES. I had never felt such disappointment in the education program and the university as a whole. And I had never felt such disappointment in the absolutely useless investment of money. If you are interesting in gaining knowledge, just look to compare ANY program of MIT or Wharton or any other university. I had never seen such an empty education program and such low organizational abilities in any educational institution.