Onsite or Online?
ACC is one of the few places that offers the same foundation course BMGT 1009 Applied PM course both onsite and ONLINE. But the choice is a matter of a student's preferred learning style, and the student's availability. An onsite course requires an attendance commitment of typically two meetings per week at one of ACC's campuses. The instructor-led ONLINE course can be done asynchronously, in that there are no appointed times/days when you must be online or in a conference call, etc. Classwork completion can occur anytime during the unit week, when the student is able to get to it. Interaction with the instructor is done via asynchronous media (e.g. email, discussion threads) or a phone call appointment if necessary.
In both the onsite and ONLINE intermediate course sections there are course case exercises included to practice synthesizing the knowledge areas into practice for both project Planning and Execution plus Monitoring & Controlling, as a team. This is rare for exam prep programs! All sections of BMGT 1009 Applied PM (onsite and ONLINE) use group team assignments to create project artifacts together – but it can sometimes be a challenge to collaborate with strangers in the ONLINE environment. Interactive tools like Google Docs and Hangouts help with the collaboration.
Both the onsite and ONLINE courses use largely the same text and PowerPoint slides which closely follow the (same) textbook. In the onsite course, an instructor delivers the lesson live. But in the ONLINE course, many pre-recorded short videos explain the concept highlights for you to absorb at your own pace (sample video).
Exams are done on paper for the onsite course, and through BlackBoard for the ONLINE course. The ONLINE course also includes short (10-25 question) quizzes on each chapter.
There is group project in both the onsite course and the ONLINE course. But the ONLINE version requires some ongoing collaborative effort with a virtual team (other classmates) to do some of the chapter exercises in the textbook remotely. Both courses do an Execution simulation via a cloud-based simulation tool.
In either the onsite or ONLINE course, a lot of the value of your course experience depends somewhat on the team members you end up working with – some are better than others, but this is very difficult to predict or control. It is, however, very much like projects you will encounter in the workplace!