Aplia Fall 2009 Courses

For Fall 2009, Aplia is offering an amazing 30 courses in 12 different disciplines:

Accounting

Principles of Accounting

Financial Accounting

Fundamentals of Accounting

High School Accounting

Managerial Accounting

Business Communications

Business Communications

Business Law

Excerpted Cases

Legal Environment of Business

Decision Sciences

Management Information Systems

Operations Management

Developmental Reading

Developmental Reading: Mid-Level

Economics

Principles of Microeconomics

Principles of Macroeconomics

Principles of Economics

Survey of Economics

Intermediate Microeconomics

Money, Banking, and Financial Institutions

International Economics

Advanced Placement Economics

Finance

Financial Management

Preparing for Finance

Management

Human Resources Management

Organizational Behavior

Principles of Management

Marketing

Principles of Marketing

Philosophy

Introductory Logic

Statistics

General Introductory Statistics

Introductory Business Statistics

Statistics for Psychology

Taxation

Individual Income Taxation

California Coast Photos

Waddell Creek (x2)

Moss Landing

Business Statistics

Completing our trio of statistics courses – three very different courses.

Business Statistics

• Business school requirement

• 4 yr. schools

• Comprehensive course

• Broad list of topics (metrics, probability, inference, regression, time series, decision analysis, ...)

• Real business data (relatively clean)

• Skill oriented

• Often uses Excel

Instructors

• Business School / Economists / Statisticians

• May have taught this course for many years

Students

• Business school majors (business, economics, finance, accounting, ...)

• Less fear of math

• Interested in decision making

Challenges

• Breadth

• Regression, inference, hypothesis testing

General Statistics

Another in our growing collection of course profiles...

General Introductory Statistics

• General education math option

• 2 yr. & 4 yr. schools

• Many topics (data, graphs, metrics, probability, ...)

• Traditional Approach: Low-level skill & drill

• ASA: Literacy, real data, concepts, active

Instructors

• Mathematicians: skills & drill

• Statisticians: conceptual (new direction)

Students

• Variety of (non-math) majors (e.g. teachers, nurses, ...)

• Fear math

• Many need math remediation

• Don't expect to ever use statistics

Challenges

• Motivation (useful?)

• Math remediation

• Tension: Skills vs. Concepts

Behavioral Statistics

I'm beginning to collect "course profiles". These are like personas, but for courses rather than users. Here's another...

Behavioral Statistics

• Required for Psychology and Sociology majors

• Sophomore or junior year

• Attempts to enhance the "science" image

• Uses large, messy data sets

• Emphasizes hypothesis testing

• Often introduces SPSS

Professors

• Psychology or Sociology Professors

• Most would rather avoid this course

• Often push practice, practice, practice

Students

• Social Science Majors (75% Psych)

• Fear math

• Lack math background, skills

• Would like to avoid this course...

• ... but are required to get through it

Challenges

• Both profs and students want to avoid this course

• Students fear math, lack math skills

• Course pushes rigorous statistical analysis

• Profs push practice, practice, practice

• = Ugh!

Stanza

Stanza is another (of many) book readers for the iPhone. In my opinion, it's a step up from Kindle for iPhone. I'm currently reading my third full novel, but haven't tried technical books. Here's my impressions.

Strengths

• Huge online catalog, includes the Gutenberg collection of 25,000 free classics

• Direct purchase from the iPhone, including books from O'Reilly

• Nice (1 pixel) progress bar along the bottom

• Flips to horizontal, vertical, upside down

• Free

Just OK

• Text look, legibility, etc.

• Page turning (tap left or right edge of screen)

• Font size options

Weaknesses

• Cover art, book jackets, title page, front matter poorly formatted and displayed

• Classics were apparently scanned, and contain frequent scanning errors

• Recent version crashes when trying to set options

Amazon purchased Lexcycle, the company that created Stanza, in late April. Perhaps this will lead to a much improved Kindle application on the iPhone. Now that iPhone 3 is out, direct purchase from Amazon for the iPhone seems likely.

Kindle for iPhone

I've read several Kindle books, both fiction and non-fiction, using the new Kindle for iPhone application. Here's my impressions:

Strengths

• Beautiful icon (really)

• Purchase through Amazon, with history, recommendations, etc.

• Book previews available free of charge

• Quick, easy downloads

• WhisperSync between devices

Just OK

• Text look, legibility, etc.

• Page turning (tap left or right edge of screen)

• Font size options

• Bookmarks

Weaknesses

• Cover art, book jacket info, title page, front matter missing or poorly presented

• Progress through the book (and the length) are very difficult to judge

• Can't (currently) purchase books from within the application

• None of the books, even classics, are free

I'll review some other iPhone book readers soon.

IDEO Method Cards

If you care about your users, you should have a deck of IDEO Method Cards. And use them.

To get you started, there are four kinds of cards. Sort them. (These are listed in the order you should do them.)

Learn: Collect and analyze information, looking for insights and patterns.

Look: Watch users go about their daily lives, to discover what they really do and what they really need.

Ask: Let potential users contribute to the design process, in ways that really help.

Try: Test the ideas before building everything. Evaluate and adjust.

IDEO Method Cards