Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 now available!

With Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft delivering a productive and powerful development experience, one that makes it easy to develop on your own or as part of a collaborative team, all the while building apps that target the latest platforms.  The interesting question for every developer out there is - what app will you build today?  You can discuss it more during the Visual Studio 2012 Launch Event on September 12th.

Developing great apps for Windows 8 is an important goal of this release. Furthermore, in addition to the Blend tools that ship with Visual Studio 2012 RTM, Microsoft had also released a new Blend + SketchFlow Preview for Visual Studio 2012 that addresses some top Blend customer requests, including support for WPF, Silverlight, and SketchFlow.

 

Top 12 of Visual Studio 2012

In case you’re still deciding whether to download Visual Studio 2012, or haven’t been keeping up with all the news about the release, I’ll leave you with 12 good reasons to upgrade today. ;-)

#1) Develop for Windows 8

Visual Studio 2012 contains all the tools you need to develop killer apps for Windows 8, from templates, to designers, to testing, to debugging. Blend now comes with the Visual Studio installation providing rich visual tools for creating Windows store apps using HTML/CSS and XAML. Using these tools, you’ll find everything you need to develop a great app and submit it to the Windows Store.

For more information, see the Windows 8 App Developer Blog and the Windows Dev Center.

#2) Develop for the Web

Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 provide the latest advances in ASP.NET including web optimization improvements (minification and bundling), new templates, HTML & CSS editor improvements, page inspector, and new publishing tools. We’ve added new features to support JavaScript development including IntelliSense improvements, a new DOM explorer, and a JavaScript console. For more information, check out the Web Development team blog.

Page Inspector

#3) Develop for Windows Phone 8

Visual Studio 2012 will provide support for developing Windows Phone 8 applications (both with a Express SKU as well as a freely downloadable plug-in for VS Pro and above). This will come online in the future, once Windows Phone 8 and the developer SDK become available. Some new features to look forward to include native C++ support, the ability to target both Windows Phone 7.x and Windows Phone 8 applications, multi-chassis support, and enterprise publishing. Stay tuned for more info from the Windows Phone team.

C++ Windows Phone 8 Application

#4) Develop for Windows Azure

Visual Studio provides the best possible tools to develop your cloud services. In Visual Studio 2012, you’ll notice cloud tooling improvements including support for distributed caching, new publishing options, new templates, and a lower install footprint. Using Team Foundation Service with Windows Azure, you can now achieve continuous integration and continuous deployment of your software. For more information, please visit the Windows Azure .NET Developer center, and download today’s release of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET.

Deployment history

#5) Develop Business Applications

Visual Studio 2012 contains a variety of tools for developing business applications. SharePoint developers will find new designers for list and content types, new templates for site columns and Silverlight web pages, as well as new options for deploying SharePoint sites. ALM features like performance profiling, unit testing, and IntelliTrace are now available for SharePoint development. Client-side development has been improved as well, with support for JavaScript debugging and IntelliSense. For more information, please visit the SharePoint developer team blog.

SharePoint List Designer
Meanwhile, we’ve also announced a new app model for Office and SharePoint 2013, which enables you to host your apps in the cloud, and to use web technologies to develop them. Visual Studio 2012, along with the Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 – Preview, gives you the tools to program with the new app models for Office and SharePoint. To learn more and get started building apps for Office & SharePoint 2013, head to http://dev.office.com.
LightSwitch is a powerful tool available for building business applications for the Desktop and the Cloud. Starting in Visual Studio 2012, LightSwitch is available as part of the Visual Studio Professional, Premium and Ultimate installations. LightSwitch includes a variety of improvements in Visual Studio 2012, such as a new theme, the ability to access data from any OData source as well as create OData services, Active Directory integration, and new business types. We also are working on support for HTML clients, which will be available as an add-on to VS2012. To learn more, please visit the LightSwitch Developer Center and the LightSwitch team blog.

LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012

#6) Develop Games and other 3D Applications

Visual Studio 2012 includes graphics tools to help game developers become more productive, making it easier to build innovative games. From debugging DirectX graphics, to designing and coding DirectX shaders (HLSL), to inspecting and manipulating graphics assets (images and models), Visual Studio 2012 provides all the functionality you need to build graphically rich 2D/3D applications.

Visual Studio 2012 Graphics Diagnostics Tools

#7) Take advantage of the latest language advancements

If you’re developing in C# or Visual Basic, you can take advantage of the language new features in Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 for asynchronous programming. Using the new async and await keywords, you can write asynchronous code that looks a lot like the synchronous version:

The C++ support in Visual Studio 2012 includes the full C++ 11 standard library as well as new language features: stateless lambdas, SCARY iterators, range-based for loops, and scoped enumerations support. Visual C++ 11 also adds seamless access to Windows Runtime components through C++/CX as well as C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP), which enables hardware acceleration for the execution of your data-parallel C++ code.
For JavaScript development, please see more details about the improvements we’ve made in the Web development section above.
Lastly, if you’re using F#, you’ll enjoy improvements for information-rich programming, which enable you to program directly against data services, and are made possible by F# type providers and LINQ queries.

#8) Performance, Reliability, and Compatibility Improvements

In addition to adding new features, we’ve also invested heavily to improve the core capabilities of the product. For example, we’ve invested in performance and made significant improvements in areas such as the toolbox, typing and editing, debugging, and solution loading time.

We’ve also taken care to improve the backward compatibility of Visual Studio 2012, and enabled you to continue collaborating on projects with teammates using Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

#9) New IDE Productivity Features

The Visual Studio 2012 user interface includes an updated look and feel, which is consistent with the latest Microsoft products, and designed to focus your attention on the code. The overall environment has been streamlined, including simplified toolbars, a lightweight Find dialog, and less tab clutter by previewing files rather than opening them during debugging. Using Quick Launch, you can now search the IDE for any menu or command.

New Find Dialog

#10) Improve your code quality with enhanced testing tools

Visual Studio 2012 includes a wealth of testing tools.
Microsoft Test Manager 2012 has been enhanced to embrace exploratory testing (sometimes called agile testing), which allows you to explore the product in any way you want while keeping relevant steps and data that can be used to directly file bugs and feedback:

Lab Management has also been greatly simplified in this release with the consolidation of agents and the introduction of standard environments, which allow you to benefit from build-deploy-test workflows without the dependency on Hyper-V or SCVMM.
With Visual Studio 2012, we now provide the ability for you to include additional adapters to support 3rd party unit testing frameworks such as xUnit.net, NUnit, and others. The new Test Explorer will showcase all of the tests across your solution regardless of which testing framework they were written for. Visual Studio 2012 will continue to provide support for traditional unit tests written using the classic Visual Studio Unit Testing Framework, and adds support for writing tests in C++ as well.

New Test Explorer

#11) Reduce cycle times using tools for agile practices

Visual Studio 2012 contains a variety of tools to create transparency between team members, reduce waste, and accelerate the flow of the project. As you set out to start the project, PowerPoint storyboarding is a useful way to communicate the requirements of the software. When you get further along, the Microsoft Feedback Client can be used to gather feedback on the working bits from external stakeholders.
Team Foundation Server 2012 provides a rich toolset for planning out your sprints, managing the backlog, and tracking progress. I recommend reading my earlier post, where I explored these features in detail. As an example, below is a picture of the taskboard, which can be used to easily edit work items during a standup meeting:

#12) Deliver Cloud-Based Services with Smoother Collaboration between Operations and Engineering

Each release of our ALM tools, we’ve integrated additional roles to improve collaboration across the team, and decrease cycle time. This release, we’re including operations, which is increasingly important for today’s cloud-based services apps. Many of you are already using System Center to monitor your applications in production. This release, we’ve introduced a new management pack, which will allow critical production issues detected by System Center 2012 SP1 to be immediately assigned to the development team with high quality diagnostic information via TFS and Visual Studio.

System Center Operations Manager
These kinds of tools for operations and engineering are something we plan to continue delivering in the future. For example, System Center 2012 SP1 will also introduce “Global Service Monitor” (GSM), which allows you to monitor your application’s functionality, performance, and uptime from multiple endpoints around the world.

How can you get them?

• If you’re an MSDN Subscriber, you can download them today from MSDN Subscriber Downloads.
• If you want the free Visual Studio Express 2012 products, or free trial versions of Visual Studio 2012, you can download them from here.  Visual Studio Express for Windows 8, Visual Studio Express for Web, and Team Foundation Server Express are all now available.  Express for Windows Phone and Express for Windows Desktop will be available later this fall.
• If you want to install .NET 4.5 separately, you can get it from http://www.microsoft.com/net.
• For volume licensing customers, Visual Studio 2012 products will be available starting tomorrow (August 16th) from the Volume Licensing Servicing Center.
• Packaged products will begin to show up in stores next month, with some products available for purchase digitally in selected regions starting in the next few days (visit the Visual Studio product website for details).

 It’s time to start your engines, and begin downloading today!

Will India Become a Superpower?

“The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity”  - Jawaharlal Nehru, 14 August, 1947.

India with its third largest economy, slotting next to China and USA, has all the attributes to become an economic super power by 2025.India's core strengths lies in its democratic framework, which can be routed to bridge the divide at the social and economic level.

Education holds the key to fulfill many ambitions from the individual to the family, the society and the nation at large. Considering that the major part of the Indian demographics is young, with over 450 million students in the education segment, there is a huge potential in this sector, to generate skilled workforce. Meaning, with skilled workforce the employment rate will increase manifold, which in turn can bring about greater economic power at the individual, family and society-level, with its cascading effects on the nation at large.

We started off with an exalted note, a thundering applause, and an optimistic tryst with destiny. Despite obnoxious Churchill laughing away sardonically. We installed the most erudite of scholars at the highest echelons of power. Even as that could not deprive us of our web of superstitious ignorance. We strived to help Indira’s India turn duplicitously  socialist carving out a veritably stimulating mixed economy. That did not prevent us from cementing the biggest feudal setup in modern times. Now a full circle; we are a capitalistic mega success, a military super power in the making, an economic giant, and foremost of all, a proud nation zealously loved, fervently guarded and sacredly held in esteem. And our lofty, unwavering proclamations of nationalism have decisively helped us masquerade our sickening class society as a vibrant and robust democracy.

It is imperative not to discount the significance of political democracy, or the labeling of it. After all, electoral voting is deeply crucial in sustaining a system that can be controlled by those exuding self-perpetuating power attained via means legitimized as desired. Democracy has become the horse for our moral rides, the unquestioned credo that stirs us to inaction, the mystical justification for the status quo. Holiest of scriptures is our Preamble which bestows upon us our long cherished national identities we refuse to critically interrogate and through those, we the people of India have given to ourselves unfathomable hyperboles.

A deeply religious society fractured with majoritarian fanaticism and yet we are the proclaimed seculars; distinctly divisive run our regional tendencies and yet we are constitutionally united; magnitudes in riches determine the electoral reach of candidates and yet we bask in largest democratic glories; unashamed playground for the capitalists of the world and yet documented we are as a socialist nation. We like to be observed as romanticized studies in great contrasts, of the slumdogs and millionaires; yet we are in reality a sustained plethora of unfortunate contradictions refusing to resolve.

Six decades ago, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar put it rather mildly, “On the 26th January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one-person-one-vote and one-vote-one-value. In our social and economic life, we shall by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one-person-one-value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?”

We have not only embraced the contradictions, we revel in them. One of the vicious outfits we entertain these days is ironically called Youth for Equality which has started appropriating none other than Dr. Ambedkar himself to further its agendas of privileged caste-blindness. Whereas Dr. Ambedkar aimed for a casteless society, he did so by recognizing the root and demanding its elimination. Before dreaming of a casteless India, he made it very clear that it is Hinduism whose scriptures be burnt down, for “inequality is the soul of Hinduism.” He wrote, “Caste is a disease of mind. The teachings of the Hindu religion are the root cause of this disease. We practice casteism and we observe untouchability because we are enjoined to do so by the Hindu religion. A bitter thing cannot be made sweet. The taste of anything can be changed. But poison cannot be changed into nectar.”

Republic of India has failed to change the poison into nectar because it is the poison we the apparently innocent, well-meaning, decent folks have voluntarily been administering within our families and schools. As a result, we not only now have major political parties unabashedly displaying Hindu affections through systematic violence against religious minorities, what is worse is we blame no longer Hinduism proponents, but their victims as the casteists: the untouchables, the Dalits, the indigenous peoples discarded by our majoritarian religious identity. The public perception that Dalit activists are the ones practicing casteism has gained unprecedented mileage in recent times, and the upper caste elitists who refuse to give up an ounce of their privileges are the ones christened as equal rights champions.

Not very dissimilar is our collective attitude towards the poor working class being the cause of embarrassment in face of our superpower aspirations. It is not the poverty that a bunch of us in power corridors - of justice, education, technology and legislation - have institutionalized to our benefit, which needs to be felt ashamed of. In fact, we gloat over the emerging India’s list of billionaires and star cricketers driving Ferraris and celebrities getting paid tens of crores per movie appearance. What we are ashamed of are our poor working class folks who get regularly evicted out of the rising cities we showcase for potential foreign investments.

The shining India up for sale comes tagged with a befitting disclaimer: “There is nothing wrong in being rich if it is hard-earned money.” No questions asked as to whose hard-work enables accumulations for the rich. Questions about capitalistic contradictions no longer require any answers. Capitalism is here to stay and flourish. After all, we have voted our parliamentarians to power and they have welcomed imperialistic trade to enslave us once again. The question that needs to be answered and addressed is that of the undesirable elements that weaken the otherwise radiating image of our beloved country - the question of the Maoists, of the disfranchised, of the destitute, of the refugees.

Full Article : http://www.saswat.com/blog/reflections-for-15th-august.html

Report By Ramachandra Guha: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/pdf/SR010/guha.pdf

Article of The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3284696.ece

Healing Hearts, Divine Delights and Hilarious Thoughts

1))  Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a great tree in the midst of them all. 

2)) I don't know what truth is, but my heart does.

3)) Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. ~ George Bernard Shaw

4)) Louisa May Alcott,
'I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship.'   5)) 'I invoke into my heart and into this space the God of my own understanding. I welcome this essence and grace into my being. May it infuse this day with the love necessary to make my work meaningful, potent and beneficial for all beings. I ask, dear spirit, that my judgment be transformed into understanding, my resistance into surrender and my fear into faith. May I stand in my power and create space and opportunity so that others may stand in their own. May I stay heart centered and available to all the people I meet and greet them with openness and a willingness to share ideas and experience without judgment, prejudice or fear. Expose my assumptions and limited beliefs so that I may grow, and give me the strength to acknowledge these limitations without shame. May the vibration that exists within my heart be offered outward into my community and the universe as a prayer for healing, unity and peace./

6))                                              Everywhere the Divine

God to surround me, God to encompass me;

God in my words, God in my thoughts;

God in my waking, God in my resting;

God in my hoping, God in my doing;

God in my heart, God in my soul;

God in my weakness, God in my strength;

God in my life, God in my eternity;

God in my life, God in my eternity.

~ W. Mary Calvert

7))

Love One Another --  Khalil Gibran

 'Love one another, but make not a bond of love.

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together.

For the pillars of the temple stand apart.

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.'


                                                                      ✫*¨*.¸¸.✶*
                                                      ~ Trust Yourself ~ Trust Life

Connecting with your Inner Self

Loving yourself is critical for personal happiness. When you learn to know and accept the true you, miracles happen. You feel at peace with yourself, you're better able to balance the tensions around you, it's easy to be authentic in relationships, and you stop having regrets for what you have or haven't done in your life.

So why is it so difficult to love yourself?

For a large part of our lives we develop habits to protect ourselves, to comply with expectations and to control what happens to us. If you've received messages from significant others in your life that you're not 'good enough,' 'smart enough,' or 'attractive enough,' fear and avoidance become the essence of your life as you try and survive in what is perceived to be a hostile world. Basically, you don't love yourself because you don't view yourself as being loveable.

Consider this: If one person on this planet is loveable, then we're all loveable. Why? Just because we're human. Just because we live and breathe and (mostly) have good intentions. After all, you don't have to be perfect to be loveable. Who is? You just have to be yourself. Maybe smile a little more. Lighten up. Be more accepting. Let go. Love your heart out. Give.

But even if you don't, you're still the only you in the universe. You still have a unique purpose and a reason for being here. Finding out what that is, is a lifelong journey of personal discovery - and you might as well love yourself on the way.

If you want to change something in your life, like your perception of yourself, it takes courage to step into the fear of change and dare to imagine that you are in fact, 'good enough.'

Benjamin Button brings a thought-provoking insight to the notion of how to love yourself towards the end of the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He says, 'For what it's worth, it's never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit... Start whenever you want.. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that stop you. I hope you feel things that you have never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life that you're proud of and if you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.'

'Nuff said!

SerialPort (RS-232 Serial COM Port) in C# .NET

Recently i am working on a project in which i have to fetch data from serial port for the identity card authentication. In that i have to store the data in the database after reading it from serial port and after processing it the result will be retrieved.

To refer Microsoft website for this : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.ports.serialport.aspx

To start off, here is sample code in a terminal application which you can try out to see how the SerialPort class is used.  This requires Visual Studio 2010 to compile, which can be obtained free via C# Express.  It is just a simple little application with basic support for text or binary (hex) modes to send and receive data.  A nice feature or two is auto-detection of installed COM ports that update at runtime if you plugin or remove USB-to-Serial adapters, also you can change the DTR and RTS levels and monitor the CTS, DSR, and CD lines.

Build Note: You will receive an error that Visual Studio isn't able to find NoahCode.pfx.  This is expected as it is the click-once certificate for publishing and is NOT NEEDED for normal code use.  Just go to Project Properties > Signing > Click on Create Test Certificate.  that’s it

go to Project Properties > Signing > Click on Create Test Certificate.  that’s it


Get Connected You can obtain USB to Serial adapters and have just about as many ports on your PC as you like. I carry around two adapters with a null modem (wikipedia) between them so I can create a loopback to send & receive through to separate ports on most any computer. I'd recommend doing the same for when writing code for the serial port.
If you'd like to quickly and easily create your own external devices to communicate with the PC, I recommend starting with the Arduino, NetDuino (like an Arduino but programmed in C#), or Parallax BASIC Stamp modules.  All three have many accessories and sensors available (such as LCDs, RF, Sounds, AD & DA, etc).  sparkfun.com is a great place to look. After that you could migrate to an Atmel Microcontroller (recommended) or Microchip PIC.

Read more

Why Indian athletes have fallen back in Olympics 2012?

As the Olympics have been just finished on a extraordinary note and everyone bid adieu it with a promise to do better in Rio Olympic. Every Indian fan has followed India in London Olympics, some with the pride and others along with the expected lines of frustration. As the media ”which is the strongest part of our country like any other countries”  had created a hype in the Indians for the Olympics .

Every Indian had expected that this time INDIA will surely perform well and make its presence felt at the international stage. The Indian Olympic association sent the first ever largest contingent in Olympics which raised our hopes of winning more medals.

We are familiar with the winning and losing character of sport that is what makes following the fortunes of one’s country in an event like Olympics that was much more intense and exciting. Much was expected from our archers and some of the boxing hopefuls but those disappointments don’t hurt as much as the hockey debacle. 

When the Olympics 2012 were finished on 12^thththsdjdkjsjdkjskjdjjkiwiue August then we Indians were happy that we have won 6 medals which is the highest ever medal haul in INDIAN history. But if we dwelt the result of London Olympic than we get to know that It was an another disappointing show by the country after its unprecedented success at the Commonwealth and Asian Games in 2010. For this many reasons has been given in the media and newspaper by the sports expert, Columnist and many high level official.

The government also spent the highest ever amount of money for the training of athletes abroad under renowned coaches in United States and Europe. But it was the same old story for India with the country finishing without a medal as has been the case in the past and leaving the biggest sporting arena without making its presence felt in athletics, one of the major attractions in these multi-discipline extravaganzas.

Indian archer team which includes the world champion Dipika Kumari is even failed to give a strong competence in the bout to the competitor. Indian pugilist as expected had performed well but unfortunately it was disappointing that none of them were not able to book the semifinal berth.

The biggest disappointment in the Olympic 2012 was the early exit of the Indian hockey team. Though hockey being national game we finished at the bottom of the table which was a shame for calling ourselves as a hockey champion. The main reason for this was the conflict between India hockey and Indian hockey federation. Because of this the Indian players have to suffer. These kind of matters should have been resolved by the government.

In Tennis India had a fair chance of winning a medal but due to the conflicts between Indian tennis players  the Indian journey in the tennis had ended in the second round. These

At last we would be very thankful to the Recent Indian star of London games that now they will inspire the millions of people to take the sports seriously. In the country like INDIA we Indians especially parent thinks that a student can only be succeeded by the studies which are the main concern for Indian sports.

Overall we cannot say that it was a disappointing show by the Indians in the London games but we could have performed well if our archers, hockey and tennis players had done better. But now by the results of London games the expectation to do well in the game has been raised. Our honorable Sports Minister Mr. Ajay Makan had also said that by 2020 we will able to win 20 gold medals.

Say Hello to Outlook.com: Hotmail reborn for a new era

Microsoft recently introduced Outlook.com, a new personal email service that reimagines the way that people use email – from a cleaner look, to fewer and less obtrusive ads, to new connections to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. It is making waves with millions of users registered within hours of its launch.
                                     

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Forward mail to another account

Gmail lets you automatically forward incoming mail to another address.
Here's how to forward messages automatically:

1. Click the gear icon in the upper right, then select Settings.
2. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
3. From the first drop-down menu in the "Forwarding" section, select 'Add new email address.'
4. Enter the email address to which you'd like your messages forwarded.
5. For your security, we'll send a verification to that email address.
6. Open your forwarding email account, and find the confirmation message from the Gmail team.
7. Click the verification link in that email.
8. Back in your Gmail account, select the 'Forward a copy of incoming mail to...' option and select your forwarding address from the drop-down menu.
9. Select the action you'd like your messages to take from the drop-down menu. You can choose to keep Gmail's copy of the message in your inbox, or you can send it automatically to All Mail or Trash. But Its better to use it archive copy in gmail because it will stop the duplicate email.
10. Click Save Changes.

You also can set up filters to forward messages that meet specific criteria. You can create 20 filters that forward to other addresses. You can maximize your filtered forwarding by combining filters that send to the same address.

The world’s largest business school

The UK’s Open University Business School is the world’s largest MBA provider with triple accreditation at EQUIS, Amba and AACSB. And the best is: it offers access to an elite business school, whatever a student’s starting point is and wherever he is in the world. MBA-Channel has had a chat with the school’s new dean, Rebecca Taylor, about distance learning and top-quality teaching.

B-schools: Shifting the game plan

Whilst applications to full time MBAs have decreased, online degrees are a growing market for b-schools. Top schools have opened up their offers to online students and more and more second- and third-tier business schools are trying to grab a piece of the growing online degree market.

A recent survey of online students conducted by online educational consultants Learning House and Aslanian Market Research found that one-third of online students pursue business degrees making it the most popular field for online degrees. Most of these online business students seek degrees in administration/management, finance, and accounting.
The more crowded the market place becomes, the more distinguishing factors the schools have thought of to stand out from the crowd. Most of these try to battle the perceived disadvantage of online learning – the missing networking factor. Therefore sophisticated videoconferencing software, social media tools and obligatory residency components have become popular additions to the courses. One of the most recent offers on the market showcases this. It comes from Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management in the U.S. The school has just recently launched a new two-year online MBA programme where students will be able to consult with other students, the faculty as well as companies in a virtual environment. Students will also need to spend a three-day residency on campus.
Other brand new online MBA degrees are offered by George Washington University’s School of Business, the University of Texas Pan-American’s College of Business Administration, University of New Hampshire’s Whittemore School of Business and Economics, and Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey for example.
Even the top ranked business schools seem to slowly open up to online learning despite the fact that most have been hesitant to enter the online market in recent years. Kenan-Flagler has started its online degree MBA@UNC for example. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the University of Virignia’s Darden School of Business will offer a few business courses online later this year. And Harvard University, University of California at Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are planning classes on the platform edX, a not-for-profit online learning initiative from autumn onwards.
Stanford University, however, has taken a different approach. Whilst the Stanford Graduate School of Business does not offer an online degree, the University itself views the online game as a great field for experimentation. After introducing three free online computer sciences classes last year that drew more than 350,000 participants from around the world, the university has established another five free online classes in March 2012.
The online classes are part of a university initiative to creatively use new technology to improve education both on campus and off. The online classes are taught by regular Stanford faculty and are highly interactive. Participants view short interactive video clips that include live quizzes and instant feedback. At the same time, participants help each other through online discussions similar to a comment thread on a social networking site. Those enrolled in the free classes do not get Stanford credit for their work, but they do receive a statement of accomplishment if they successfully complete a course.