The Globe and Mail article below offers some good advice from a current MBA student, including the novel idea of “entering academic competitions”:
Workademia.com’s awards and recognition for top publications is a recommended way to start competing!
Best regards,
B
We’ve posted a 1 min 30 sec video on YouTube to share with MBA students. Please check it out and let us know what you think!
link: “Introducing workademia.com” YouTube video
Cheers,
B
Workademia.com has a revised homepage including a new “Publish Now” button and a link to our blog (footer). Check us out!
In a 2010 article, the NY Times discussed a transformation in what it called “scholarly exchange”. The use of scholarly exchange -or in other words, peer review and collaboration in research -is growing due to the increased use of web-based social media (blogs, forums, comment boxes). Although focused on PhD level works specifically, the article made some generally-applicable observations:
>the use of social media like blogs and wikis speeds up the sharing of knowledge and perspectives considerably, allowing for faster agreement on theories, theorems, proofs, etc.
>the use of open review brings new perspectives from other fields, “making scholarship better” for the case cited in the article
>the use of experts for closed peer review is not going away, as these individuals understand the field-specific significance of research and ideas being presented
Workademia.com exists to promote this kind of scholarly exchange. The site enables MBA students from top 100 programs to disseminate their papers and presentations. What is more, these papers and presentations have already undergone review and grading by subject matter experts -i.e. program professors. Workademia.com then uses an open peer review system that allows a community of business professionals and students to further rate and review the works. Finally, on a quarterly basis a committee of academicians and professionals review the top publications in each category in order to recognize and award the best of the best.
High Quality Content
Grading by professors gives expert academic input. A focused open peer review brings fresh perspectives. Review by a panel helps further identify the leading business publications. All of these methods, on top of internal quality controls of the content, provide a multi-pronged approach that will help ensure high quality publications on workademia.com.
(see our blog post about the workademia.com peer review model here)
Academically Focused
The closing quote of the article noted that academia is “caught in the middle” of an “insular, specialized world of expert scholarship and the open free wheeling exchange on the Web.” The use of an academically-focused social media tool like workademia.com presents a great opportunity to bridge this middle -bringing together the concepts and ideas from academia with the real world perspectives of business professionals.
Scholarly exchange through social media is becoming a new reality for the academic world. Through its MBA generated publications, open peer review and panel reviews, workademia.com wants to ensure its success.
Regards,
B
What a great group of incoming students! Tim and I had a lot of fun discussing the site, career paths, entrepreneurism and my personal experiences at Rutgers.
Special Thanks:
At this event and at the previous part-time orientation, the Deans and Staff at RBS have been overwhelmingly helpful and accommodating. We can’t thank you enough.
Best of luck to all those entering the program. We look forward to piloting and further developing workademia.com alongside all of you.
Cheers,
Brien & Tim
Tim & Brien thoroughly enjoyed talking with the incoming Rutgers MBA students this past Saturday. RBS has some sharp and creative students entering the program, and we certainly hope they will contribute to workademia.com and help make it as high caliber as they are.
Look forward to meeting the incoming full time students on 8/17!
Cheers,
Brien & Tim
One of the core features of workademia.com is our open peer-review system for all posted publications. We offer two attributes – “Content Assessment” and “Writing Assessment” – for our users to rate.
A few month’s back the NY Times ran a piece on the perceived lack of “writing and reasoning skills” of undergraduate business students in even top tier programs. One of the fixes that UVA’s Darden School of Business has implemented is a new standard rating scale for all papers based on, you guessed it, content and writing quality:
“The students in the room know they’ll be grilled on each day’s case study. And when they hand in papers, they’re marked up twice: once for content by a professor with specialized expertise, and once for writing quality by a business-communication professor.”
NY Times: Skating Through B-school
Workademia.com is proud to embrace such an academically-based and intellectually driven open peer-review model for the publications on our site.
Thank you for taking part in our ratings & reviews,
B
The article below highlights career choices for today’s MBA’ers, with some of the tech giants taking top spots. But relevant to workademia’s goals of becoming a truly academic-based and intellectually driven platform was the following quote:
“Being competitively or intellectually challenged is the No. 1 career goal among new MBAs this year…”
MBA students have an opportunity to profile their intellectual prowess on workademia.com, as well as engage the business world and web at-large in a very intellectually meaningful way.
Look forward to bringing this intellectual resource and platform to bear!
B
Workademia.com is very excited to be working with Rutgers Business School (RBS), the program Brien was attending when the workademia concept was born!
Our model involves partnering with top MBA programs directly so that together we can build a platform that achieves our 2 main goals:
1. Become a primary resource of business knowledge and ideas that professionals and general web users turn to
2. Become a valuable networking and collaboration tool for MBA students, programs, professionals and companies
Thanks to all of you trailblazers taking part in this early stage of the site. Through your use and feedback, you are helping us achieve these goals and create a site that serves you best.
Best Regards,
Brien
So this week we have proudly relaunched Workademia! Following feedback and research, we felt that the focus of the original site – encompassing all major academic fields – was too broad. We’ve therefore narrowed this focus to what, in actual fact, was our original vision: research and ideas relating to business. Workademia is now well suited to meet the needs of business grads & undergrads, MBA students, business professionals, and indeed anyone with an interest in the latest trends in business research.
We hope that you like the new site! As always, all comments and feedback are welcome.
