My Executive MBA experience

In August 2019, I was given the news that I had graduated my EMBA course and I wanted to share my Executive MBA experience and answer the question I am often asked – “What is the Quantic MBA like?”.

I did an EMBA through an online-only company that was initially called Smartly Institute. That was probably the worst thing about it – the name of the awarding institution (see below for an update). I recognise that the company probably set itself up as an online training service, and the name may have been apt at one time, but in my view (and many of the other course attendees) the name “Smartly” on my Executive Master of Business Administration actually would have diminished its value. Smartly are licensed to award Master’s Degrees, and they are fully above board and valid as an MBA Master Degree issuer. The drawback with Smartly (as at 2019) is that they are not accredited as an issuer of an MBA – a process which takes multiple years.

Update, February 2020; Smartly has renamed to The Quantic School of Business and Technology at https://quantic.edu/. This change happened after my graduation, so this review, which was written in August 2019, uses the name Smartly.

Update, February 2020; Quantic is now accredited by DEAC (Distance Education Accrediting Commission)

Eligibility

I was eligible to do the Executive MBA, which is considered a mid-career MBA that has an expectation of prior industry knowledge. When I applied, I had to provide my background and references (who were contacted and interviewed), and my experience was evaluated before I was allowed to enrol. I also had a video conference interview and I was required to complete the first module of the course to validate that I had the prior experience and capacity to complete the course. This also allowed me to experience the platform and identify if it was a good approach for me.

Mid-way through the course, Smartly required my transcript from my Bachelor’s Degree course that I completed over 25 years ago, to validate that I actually had a BA. They also needed proof of my identity and photo ID – they imply on their site that when I was involved in video conference contributions, they validate that I match my photo ID, but I did not notice this happening – they did not ask me to validate my identity during the presentations and video conferences in any formal way – but it may have been done offline.

Course

One of the reasons I chose this course was because it is self-paced, all online, and this matched my requirement to continue to do a full-time job and have my life with a young family.

The course met my expectations of being self-paced, in that all the course materials can be done at any time, and you can go back over every part of the course and re-do it. I used this capability to work ahead in times when I knew that I would not be able to dedicate 2-4 hours of study every evening.

Initially, I was shocked at how the content was presented. I expected videos of recorded lectures, large form documents and videos of interviews of business studies. Instead, the course is a series of hundreds of slides, and on every slide there are buttons – these are mostly multiple choice answers to complete sentences in the slide. There are a few slides where you have to type in the correct number or word to complete the calculation or formula.

Course Content

The course had the following modules which I undertook;

• Accounting; financial statements, managerial accounting, revenue & expenses, credits & debits
• Markets & Economies; microeconomics, macroeconomics, corporate financing, International trade
• Data & Decisions; probability, statistics, regression analysis, statistical inference, data collection
• Leading Organisations; teamwork, leadership, corporate governance, ethics, culture, board of directors
• Marketing & Pricing; brand, digital marketing, A/B testing, e-commerce pricing
• Finance; present & future value, NPV, cost of capital, budgeting, portfolios
• Strategy & Innovation; business, corporate, international
• Operations Management; project management, operational variability challenges
• US Business Law (optional specialisation)
• Advanced Corporate Strategy; mergers & acquisitions (optional specialisation)
• Startup Entrepreneurship (optional specialisation)

There were some additional optional specialisation courses and additional courses that were not part of the main curriculum, so I decided not to do all of them at this stage, instead focusing on completing the core requirements for the EMBA. I later returned to them some months later, and did them at my own pace.

The Content Format

The slideshow-based format was both helpful and bad. Sometimes, there were concepts that were not fully explained, so I had to do extra research so that I could fill in the gaps – either in my prior experience or in the language used in the slide. This was actually good to do – I learnt more, except when the research ended up confusing me when there were differences in the Internet sources!

As the course is from the US, there were many assumptions about understanding US businesses and approaches – for example, comparing two businesses that I had never heard of. This made it hard to understand some of the comparisons that were being made – even though they would have been household names in the US.

One other problem was with the strange humour that would appear in some modules or lessons. One lesson was so obfuscated by the attempt at humour that I had to repeat the lesson multiple times to try and understand it. I struggled to understand the parallels they were making between a “Dungeons and Dragons” role-playing game and the concept of allocating staff skills to tasks, so it made it harder for me to understand, not easier.

As every single slide had a question, most slides had multiple. I estimated that there were at least 150,000 questions to answer through the course. At the end of 6 to 10 lessons, there was an end of module test – for some reason called a “Smartcase”, which looked exactly like a lesson, but you could not go back to a previous slide, and the results were both timed and calculated for results. Until you score more than 80% correct on the end of module test, you cannot progress to the next module until you score over 80%. It was possible to re-try the Smartcase again and again until a passing grade was achieved. I chose to keep re-doing the tests until I got 100% in every one, as Smartcase results count towards 20% of your final grade. The Smartcase questions and answers changed slightly at each retry, so it was not the sort of thing that you could just write down the answers as a,c,e,a,b etc. and re-try, it took re-consideration of each question.

Exams

There were 11 exams. These were the only parts that were not self-paced, they were assigned to particular dates – there was a week where the exam was ‘unlocked’, and then when you start the exam you have exactly 48 hours to complete it from when you pressed the start button. The exams had the format that was the same as the coursework slides and the Smartcases – with the one extra limitation that you could not re-try the exam at all.

The one drawback of the exams (and Smartcases) looking exactly the same as lessons was related to the way that normal lessons allow you to go back – in an exam (and Smartcase) you cannot go back. In lessons, if you get an answer wrong, you get additional information and help if you go back or get something wrong. So, the lessons condition you to make errors to learn, but the exams look the same.

So, I quickly learned that there was a process to pass the exams that I could reliably follow. As such, my first three exams had a lower grade – every exam after I discovered my new approach was over 90%. It may sound simple, but what I learned was that the exams were completely 100% based on the course materials, and not on my own research that I had to do in some cases.

So, I needed to ensure that I limited my own research and self-study (as some of my self study was revealing contradictory information where two or more Internet sources did not agree), but also I decided to take copious notes. It ended up that I was taking screenshots of almost every slide – including the pop-up boxes that would appear if you chose the wrong option to one of the on-slide questions.

Through my life, I have always picked things up quickly and learned new skills easily. However, being a Master’s Degree, and particularly as this was an intense mid-career course, there was a lot of information to retain. This course needed me to take notes more than I had ever done before. I used OneNote to take screenshots of the text (as it was not possible to copy text from the Smartly slides), and used the OneNote capability to search text within an image when I needed to find content. There was also a good search facility within the content, and an index of key terms and concepts at the bottom of each module/lesson menu.

Other components

Apart from the exams, there were 3 case studies and 29 exercises. The first case study was a group assignment, and the next two could either be solo or group. It was a challenge working with people in a different geography, and also with personalities that were leaders in their own field – in my first case study, there were too many chiefs and not enough indians. As I felt that the work I did was actually diminished by the group, I chose to do the next two case studies solo. My grade for the first group case study was 3 out of 5 and my solo grade for the next two was 100% with additional complements for the quality of my work.

The exercises were published almost every two weeks, and were mini-case studies of online articles that relate to business issues, in time to modules of the course that were being studied at the time. I found these interesting, and as they were not mandatory, I could do them when I wanted to. I could see the content contributed by others in my class to these exercises – through the Slack channel. The other contributions allowed me to learn even more about other’s views on the case studies.

MBA Practicality

So, the main question is, after 11 exams, 150,000 questions, 3 case studies, nearly 30 exercises, hundreds of hours, and thousands of dollars on the fees – was it worth it? Did I learn anything new? Will it be useful in my career?

Well, I did learn a lot – and some of my pre-existing knowledge was solidified and strengthened. I really feel that I have been better prepared for business, leadership and operations – particularly as my entire career has been in IT, so I was exposed to more general business concerns.

My final results in the exams definitely reflected my confidence and skills in the areas that I studied – my lowest score (75%) was in statistics, which I had never done before and so it was the hardest for me to learn. The Advanced Strategy exam was my best result (98%), and it was also the course that I had the most confidence and prior knowledge in.

I would recommend the Smartly Quantic EMBA to others, and I feel that it has prepared me for the next chapter of my life. The only drawback is that it is named, and issued by, Smartly – if they were accredited and had a better name, it would be perfect.

Update, February 2020; Smartly has been renamed to The Quantic School of Business and Technology. Also Quantic is now accredited by DEAC (Distance Education Accrediting Commission) So, the main concerns I had about the name and accreditation have now been resolved!