Overview of Technology Management & Technology-based Entrepreneurship

When first semester started rolling in, I asked Ate Jas for some tips regarding the classes that I will be taking. According to her, Drs. Posadas and Dayco have different teaching styles but both are very technical and detailed with their lectures. For this semester, however, both required a final exam and a case study to work on. Class participation and attendance, and a midterm exam were also needed for the Overview of Technology Management (TM 201) class. For Technology-based Entrepreneurship (TM 251), we were required to submit weekly reaction papers on the topics that will be discussed and half of the grade will come from the case study.

TM 201 is handled in an old-fashioned way. A bit too bookish, perhaps? Lectures where derived from the slides and class participation was graded with the number of questions/discussions shared by the student. The downside of this method is that some students tend to dawdle with their "questions", making the lecture unfinished or hanging come 9pm. It would be better if the class participation can be moderated, so that there will be equal airtime among students and nobody will have the monopoly on class discussions and become too one-sided. Both midterm and final exams were open-notes. (DocP even joked that we can refer to our notes and computers are allowed, but we cannot call a friend), and my hands suffered from these exams since you'd want to write everything you can write for the exam. I'd really recommend some warm-up writing exercises before the exam to prep the hands. As for the exams, you will survive by reading only his slides. Anyway the contents were lifted from his sources and not much were changed.

TM 251, on the other hand, is more of a story-telling session about the experiences of DocP and his friends on starting and running a business. I heard lots of industry gossips, or in the case, industry facts. Some of the stories were told a number of times, so, more or less by the end of the semester, you have memorized these by heart. As for the reaction papers required for the class, I jibber-jabbered my way by writing something related to the reading material required for that week.The case study required for the class is another story since a paper and a presentation were required, and some groups were really grilled during the Q&A part of the presentation. We were lucky that he only asked us what was our prognosis on the company we worked on. There was also a bit of misunderstanding for the final exam because we were given the impression that it will also be open books, only to find out that it will not be open notes during the exam. Good thing that we were forewarned about this by the TM204 class. The questions were answerable as long as you have a copy of the slides DocD used throughout the semester.

I'd say that I learned a lot from these two subjects since I really have no background whatsoever on management and entrepreneurial topics. Good thing, I got good scores this semester and made me still eligible to graduate after 2.5 years. Yes! Just two and a half years and I will get my first masters degree :)