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Back to Business Strategy in Practice (Project-centered Course)

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Business Strategy in Practice (Project-centered Course) by University of Virginia

4.7
stars
173 ratings

About the Course

A Capstone Project is an assignment designed specifically to apply and showcase the skills you learned in the Specialization. To this end, the Business Strategy Capstone Project, a comprehensive Strategic Analysis, provides an opportunity for you to synthesize concepts and knowledge from the four prerequisite courses in the specialization. In this course, developed at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, you will be guided through your project by top-ranked faculty. You may continue with the organization you selected for previous assignments or select a new organization for this project. You will analyze the current state of the organization, strategic issues facing the organization, strategic paths the organization might pursue, make a recommendation of the best path for the organization to pursue, and write an Executive Summary. Your finished project will serve as an artifact showcasing your ability to conduct research on/within an organization, select and apply the most appropriate analytical tools, build a well-supported case for a specific position, and effectively communicate key points with executive leadership....

Top reviews

DO

Oct 17, 2019

The hands on approach helped me to gain confidence in my ability to carry out a strategic analysis of an organization. The project forced me to thoroughly revise all the preceding 4 courses.

JS

Nov 26, 2016

Unless you complete the Capstone project all the knowledge remains bookish and theoretical.

In order to learn application of knowledge or skill in action one must do the Capstone project.

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1 - 25 of 52 Reviews for Business Strategy in Practice (Project-centered Course)

By Joel H

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Apr 2, 2018

While the other courses were extremely promising, the professors/school has done a great job in preparing its students, I think Coursera has done a POOR job in aiding learners in the final stretch of completion. This has been a grueling year and it's very difficult to mix the real live with online learning.

Please be aware that there are EXTREMELY limited amount of learners that sign up for the final courses, and as, so much of the final grade depends on peer assessment, NO ONE will be available to assess your final work.

Therefore you lay in limbo, or are focus to keep signing up praying someone will "randomly" select yours to be assessed. Therefore, while it might sound like a good idea, in my opinion, it's an extremely poor strategic approach by Coursera. Perhaps Coursera should take this Business Strategy course themself. That, and Coursera does a really poor job and is almost impossible to find customer support to help resolve these issues.

By Joseph P

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Dec 1, 2020

The entire grading system revolving around peer review is fundamentally flawed and does not show mastery over the subject matter. How will people who have a lack of mastery about the subject matter be able to properly evaluate the performance of other people who also possess the same lack of mastery?

Perhaps there are too many students for these instructors to individually check, but this is not the way to go about it. The entire system is inherently flawed as demonstrated by the gap of proficiency among any two students. This includes English proficiency. While I do appreciate the stance of being open to all willing learners regardless of where they come from, certain prerequisites need to be present in order to foster fairness in an educational setting.

Traditional school settings with students in a classroom work because these students all belong to a certain year, and are taking certain classes in their major, thereby starting off with the premise that these students possess a similar level of base proficiency that the instructors can work off of. So having peer reviews in these settings promotes a level of fairness since all of these students are on a similar learning level.

In Coursera's free for all system, it is potentially dangerous, and harmful to individuals receiving grades that they may not deserve. Whether an academically sound paper is graded low because certain terms are not understood by those reading it, or a poor quality paper is graded high due to collusion from students who TRADE grades. I have seen it for myself in the forums of people asking for a high grade and grading your submission highly in return. I have flagged these as such, but I am unable to confirm if appropriate action was even taken against these individuals.

I cannot, in good faith, support any other academic classes from Coursera given the abysmal quality of evaluation that I have observed and received from all kinds of students, and the seeming lack of quality control that the site itself has for said evaluation methods.

By Marcello B

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Feb 13, 2018

Great specialization, great professors.

By Robert L

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Apr 8, 2017

Great course, learned a lot

By Alexander R A

•

Feb 8, 2017

Excellent program

By Md. D N

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Jul 30, 2020

I have learnt how to use business strategy in the real world. I would like to thank the instructors as well as coursera, for making this learning process incredible, interesting and joyful.

By Naji A

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Oct 19, 2016

I found the process effective and helpful. The fact it connects to earlier courses and lay out the build up of the project over weeks is excellent. Having the final task a compilation of earlier work with executive summary is excellent model. At some stages I felt time pressure given my work duties and I am happy the process made it easier to continue.

By Claudia P C C

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Nov 21, 2018

It was a great experience.

By Faiz C

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Oct 19, 2016

Outstanding Experience

By nr g

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Mar 7, 2018

IThis was disappointing. After completing the first 4 courses with enthusiasm, I found this course to of little additional learning value; and given the length requiring additional monthly payment with no pro rate, it also of limited value for money.

By Aneesh R

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Aug 1, 2019

You guys screwed me by not letting me start the class for another month. I deserve my money back

By John Y

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Dec 12, 2017

This was a great opportunity to use the tools in the Strategist's Toolkit to apply them to a real world company. While the focus of the 4 courses leading up to the capstone project were meant to teach the individual tools, this course was focused on analyzing the outputs of the tools and making a thoughtful strategy recommendation.

By Humberto B

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Jan 5, 2017

Great course. My suggestion is to ensure that students develop their feedback, rather than just saying: "good work", "great", "nothing to report". It is a bit frustrating to develop such a large effort and receive this type of feedback just for others to pass the course...

By Dhinesh A D

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Jun 9, 2020

Have gained a new skillset - to analyze an organization and look for strategic paths for growth, and how to eradicate the strategic issues and major strategic issue that affects the organization.

Great course on Strategy Planning and Execution. Highly recommended.

By Terrance K

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Dec 14, 2017

This course was structure in a clearly and concisely. Every assignment was re-enforced in subsequent lessons to ensure that the concepts were absorbed. I highly recommend this comprehensive course and I look forward to taking additional courses.

By Juergen S

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Jul 25, 2019

This course proves that online learning formats can well comprise complex action learning, including peer feedback. The work-in-progress milestone structure encourages to use this feedback for continuous improvement of the final outcome.

By Gregorio A A P

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Sep 11, 2017

Excellent course of very good quality, only that the Spanish speaking people, Latin Americans and South Americans would appreciate if they were so gentle to translate your prestigious courses into the English language

By Gus A

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May 25, 2022

Excellent course. The videos are very well structured, examples are super relevant and the assignments top it up giving plenty of opportunity to practice in a safe environment. Really happy I chose this

By Kaushal B

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Jul 28, 2020

This course was very well designed and I enjoyed watching all the videos and learning about all the different analysis methods. This capstone project has everything needed to conclude this specialization

By Derick O

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Oct 17, 2019

The hands on approach helped me to gain confidence in my ability to carry out a strategic analysis of an organization. The project forced me to thoroughly revise all the preceding 4 courses.

By John G

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Nov 15, 2018

A Must-take course once you have finished all the Fundamental courses. It will test how much you have actually learned and put them into a cogent and concise Strategic Paper.

By Carlos E M

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Jun 13, 2016

A very well thought final project where one can apply all the tools but also get the best out of such tools to create valuable analysis with the information found.

By George E N

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Nov 12, 2020

This is a very good course for professionals of all backgrounds to deepen their business knowledge and an eye opener for those of us with technical background

By ARVIND M

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Feb 23, 2018

An excellent specialization to learn about the strategies a firm uses. This specialization is a perfect leeway for someone who want to become a strategist.

By Fernando P

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Oct 17, 2019

Sstrongly recommended finish all the specialization for get the best for your development. Thanks University of Virginia.