As part of their Blandin Foudantion LightSpeed project, Minnesota West Community & Technical College is offering online business classes. They are doing FastTrac New Venture online using the Kaufmann Foundation materials. They are the first group that the Kaufmann Foundation has allowed to do the course online. So that’s a great opportunity. Course topics include the following:
The SBM Core Series includes:
- Strategic Planning – October 2010 – In Progress
- Organizing and Understanding your Business Financials – October 2010 – In Progress
- Marketing, Intro to Marketing your Business – October 2010 – In Progress
- Intro to Personnel Systems for your Business – January 5, 2011
- Financial Management – January 4, 2011
- Marketing II – January 7, 2011
Special Topic Classes
- Introduction Quickbooks®- First Class Tuesday November 16, 2010
- Quickbooks® Payroll – First Class December 7, 2010
- Quickbooks® Online One-on-One – Individually Scheduled. For Appointment call 1-800-658-2330, ext 6827 or 507-825-6827 Email Duane.Krueger@mnwest.edu
- Marketing Your Business Online – First Class Monday, January 10, 2011
- Fast Trac® New Venture™ – First Class Monday November 22, 2010
(You can get a full list of classes being offered now and in the future.)
Duane Krueger was kind enough to send me the information on the upcoming classes and to answer a few questions for me about how the classes have been going…
We did experience some issues with our audio during our classes this fall. We had to switch from Web-Ex this year to Adobe Connect. The bandwidth issue, or should I say the lack of bandwidth issue, really caused problems with our online classes. We tried to go with microphones and speakers for all participants, including instructors. Adobe Connect, and I assume many other software programs like it, was only usable if no student was able to talk. Our classes are built on interaction between student and instructor as well as between student and student. We recently switched to a PGI system in Adobe Connect that enables us to have clear audio between instructors and students. PGI is a phone system that costs us 6 cents a minute per participant. So a class that has eight, 1 hour sessions with 15 participants costs us $432.00. Let’s just say our program budgets are being stretched.
It helps make the point that while it’s important that anchor institutions have ultra-fast broadband, residents need adequate bandwidth as well. Also for folks who have broadband, here’s an opportunity to use it.