Virtual university
Virtual University
Starting up a Business
1. Introduction
Welcome to the first Unit of the Business Management course. You have made a wise decision to embark on this programme of study, and we are certain that the ideas will help you start up your own business.
Any aspiring business person has to come to terms with basic concepts associated with a business. Throughout this course, we intend to discuss concepts like 'entrepreneurship', 'the an enterprise', 'the business idea', and factors that influence your intention to start up a business. For a given country, the factors could be cultural, economic, political, or environmental.
As you interact with the ideas introduced, you will be conversant with the different skills related to Business Management. This is so because, for any business venture to succeed, business management skills have to be properly applied. This will be related to your understanding, as a newcomer to the business world or even if you already are a business manager, of the categories of businesses available namely, product-oriented and service-oriented businesses.
VUO objectives
At the end of this unit, you should be able to:
• explain to someone the concept of business management
• use appropriate terms that are related to business management
• suggest reasons for setting up businesses
• identify business ideas
• compare the potential of different business ideas
• differentiate between business types
• describe factors that influence the starting of a business, and relate them to your situation
•
What factors influence the business?
Now that you have looked at some of the key concepts, and discussed
the reasons for getting into business, you should examine factors that
influence your type of business. There are many factors, some of them
positive and others negative. We shall select a few, then as you read
further, we expect you to come out with some of your own.Kotler and
Armstrong (2004) have come up with several factors, and we discuss
some of these below. How exactly do the factors impact on business?
Let’s examine each one in turn
Cultural factors
The culture of a country refers to customary practices and beliefs
that people uphold. Jarvis (2002) has observed that culture is made up
of institutions and other forces that affect society's basic values,
perceptions, preferences, and behaviours. The entrepreneur should
remember that people grow up in a particular society that shapes their
basic beliefs.
Culture affects the way consumers think and use certain products. As
an example, in some cultures, it is not proper for women to deal with
the public e.g. selling goods or wares. This is a crucial factor for
business purposes. Firstly, should the mother of a family identify a
business idea that is likely to bring income to the family, she will
not be able to operate the business because of cultural constraints.
Secondly, should she, nevertheless, go ahead and start a business,
that might lead to conflicts in the family, and in turn that might
cause the family to break up.
Economic factors
The economy of a country refers to activities in which people are
employed to generate revenue.Two economic factors reflect a country's
attractiveness for business. Firstly, its industrial structure shapes
its product and services needs, income levels and employment levels.
Secondly, in a subsistence economy the vast majority of people engage
in simple agriculture. They consume most of their output and barter
the rest for simple goods and services. In such a situation, there are
few market opportunities for a business.
For example the economy of Botswana is based on diamonds and beef
industry. The economy of Mauritius depends on tourism and agricultural
production, specifically sugar production. How would the economy of
your country affect your business? Let us imagine that you had set up
a retail shop at a settlement where employees depend on diamond mining
for their wages and salaries. Suppose the mine closes down because
diamonds have been depleted or there is a slump in the industry. How
does that impact on your business? To begin with, workers will be
retrenched and can no longer have money to spend. Secondly, they might
migrate to new places where they are offered jobs. This means you end
up without customers, hence no income from the business. You will be
left with goods that no one wants because your market has been
affected. Eventually, you have to close shop.
Political factors
So, what do you think are political factors? Nations differ in their
political and legal approaches. Such factors should be taken into
account when deciding whether to set up a business. Government
bureaucracy is an example. This refers to the way a particular
government facilitates or constrains business. If, as an example, only
citizens are allowed to operate certain types of business, that means
non-citizens will find it difficult to start up businesses even though
they have the capital to do so.
Political instability is another factor. A country is said to be
politically unstable if there is violence or when there is no rule of
law. Unstable political situations discourage business. As an
investor, you may not feel safe to set up a business where there is no
assurance of security.
Environmental Factors
The environment of a business can be both physical and political. In
business terms, the physical environment refers to the place where
your business is situated.Location will determine the success or
failure of the business. If you were to locate the enterprise, say a
hotel, in a place where there are bad roads, it is most likely that
customers will not be able to reach you. So, in that case,the
environmental factor would be a major constraint for setting up the
enterprise.
virtual Definition
()Via the technical term {virtual memory}, probably from the term
"virtual image" in optics) 1. Common alternative to {logical}; often
used to refer to the artificial objects (like addressable {virtual
memory} larger than physical memory) created by a computer system to
help the system control access to shared resources. 2. Simulated;
performing the functions of something that isn't really there. An
imaginative child's doll may be a virtual playmate. Opposite of {real}
or physical. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-30
Introduction
As universities seek to realign themselves in response to the new
societal needs, paradigms and communications and information
technology (ICTs) infrastructures, branding is causing semantic
confusion. The label 'university' has a long pedigree, its core
business being the creation, processing and disseminating knowledge in
the search for truth, and remains sacrosanct. Universities do not
change because there was no incentive to change. Therefore they
enjoyed a degree of stability in the last 400 years entrenching their
built-in capacity to resist change. But technology forces that bring
dot.com corporates to their knees changing all aspects of human
endeavour will do the same to the university.
Why become virtual?
Winston Churchill observed that 'future empires will be empires of the
mind' implying the centrality of knowledge. Universities are assuming
virtual dimensions to respond to a set of real world global issues in
the dawn of the 21st century. The pressures of rising enrolments and
increasing fiscal constraints, and the inability of currently designed
university systems to address the increasing bifurcation of society
into the information rich and information poor are significant impetus
for universities to go virtual.
Furthermore, the United Nations launched the Global Virtual University
of the United Nations University (GVU) in 2003, an online school that
will focus on sustainable development and the needs of the developing
world. Comprising of a network of universities, including some from
Ghana, Uganda and South Africa it will be headed by the UN
Environmental Programme with Norway's Adger University as the core
partner, and will offer common diplomas and joint degrees Similarly,
The Commonwealth of Learning that embraces 54 mainly developing
countries is currently working on developing The Virtual University of
the Small States of the Commonwealth).
Universities in Crisis
The prevailing neoliberal, mainly Eurocentric discourse on the future
of universities and higher education has since the 1960s lamented the
parlous state of education More than two decades on, the crises in
education in all societies persists, and is deepening as governments
grapple for solutions.
Readings (1996) suggests that the contemporary university is a
"ruined" institution, shifting from its core functions of knowledge
discourse to the new "marketspeak" of managerialism, strategic
planning, performance indicators and so on that have little to do with
higher order thinking and knowledge creation. Another theorist whose
work has influenced the re-thinking of the role of universities is
Jean-Francois Lyotard). He argues that the changing nature of
knowledge in capitalist societies has lead to commodification, which
has changed the nature of universities' future role in higher
education (Why are our education systems that have been so successful
for thousands of years now out of synch with societies' needs? Does
the problem lie in the way education is administered, the methods of
The Virtual University
The infrastructure of the virtual university which is on the Internet
is the technology that makes possible telelearning, telebanking,
teleworking, teleshoping and telemedicine without leaving one's home.
Distance from any place is no longer a limiting factor. It does not
matter where the university is physically located and learners in any
country can as easily access courses from the global virtual
university as they can from their neighbourhood university. In fact as
Internet access increases, for people who are housebound, in hospitals
or at work or are travelling, it offers an invaluable alternative
access to educational opportunities.
Conclusion
The digital revolution and economic globalisation are herald a new era
towards the global knowledge society where information, skills and
competence become the driving forces of social and economic
development. The problems associated with this transformation cannot
any longer be solved by traditional means.
At no time is there a suggestion in this article that virtual
universities will replace conventional universities. Rather they will
be complementary and seek to work with them and through them. Both
will exist in tandem because education is about contextualisng,
connectivity and networking in a global environmental ecology, giving
the learner choice in where, when and how they access learning.
In researching the virtual university, there appears to be no
intractable cognitive problem to learning and teaching with the
Internet. However, students will go through great lengths to socialise
with each other in physical reality. Universities are not just
instructional automatons. They are a state of mind and this means
social and cultural interaction.
Why become virtual?
Winston Churchill observed that 'future empires will be empires of the
mind' implying the centrality of knowledge. Universities are assuming
virtual dimensions to respond to a set of real world global issues in
the dawn of the 21st century. The pressures of rising enrolments and
increasing fiscal constraints, and the inability of currently designed
university systems to address the increasing bifurcation of society
into the information rich and information poor are significant impetus
for universities to go virtual.
Creating Knowledge
The creation of knowledge is the raison d'etre of universities as
institutions engaged in research. In these postmodern times and
liberal economies, applied research with tangible measurable outputs
funded by industry and hence tagged are favoured by cash-strapped
modern universities, over basic research as a process of enquiry and
search for new knowledge with less tangible outcomes. How do
universities foster research environments to add to the corpus of
world knowledge?
A HyperClass (HC)
The HyperClass is based on HyperReality (HR) a technological platform
developed by Nobiyoshi Terashima). HyperReality intermeshes physical
reality and virtual reality allowing people who are physically present
in different places to meet as telepresences to work together on a
common task. Terashima’s idea is a spatio-temporal field of
communication that makes connection not only between the real and
virtual, but also between artificial intelligence (AI) and human
intelligence.
The Virtual University
The infrastructure of the virtual university which is on the Internet
is the technology that makes possible telelearning, telebanking,
teleworking, teleshoping and telemedicine without leaving one's home.
Distance from any place is no longer a limiting factor. It does not
matter where the university is physically located and learners in any
country can as easily access courses from the global virtual
university as they can from their neighbourhood university. In fact as
Internet access increases, for people who are housebound, in hospitals
or at work or are travelling, it offers an invaluable alternative
access to educational opportunities.
Contents
• 1 History
• 2 Coursework
• 3 Teaching modes
• 4 Quality
• 5 See also
• 6 References
• 7 Examples of virtual universities
History
The defining characteristic of all forms and generations of distance
education is the separation of student and teacher in time and space.
Distance education can be seen as the precursor to online learning.
Before the advent of virtual universities, many higher education
institutions offered some distance education through print-based
correspondence courses. These courses were often referred to as a
“course in a box These have been developed so that students can obtain
almost immediate feedback from professors and online tutors through
e-mails or online discussions.
Quality
Students taking “virtual" courses are doing “real” work to get their
degrees, and educators preparing and teaching those courses spend
“real” time in doing so. That is, students meet a comparable level of
academic learning outcomes and are evaluated through programs
constructed according to standard university-level criteria.[ Though
it should not be assumed, virtual universities may be accredited in
the same way as traditional universities and operate according to a
similar set of academic standards.
However, questions remain about accreditation and the quality of
assessment. Accreditation is required to assure students that the
online institute has certified online instructors who have the
expertise and educational qualifications to design and carry out the
curriculum. Assessment standards need to be particularly closely
monitored in virtual universities. For example, respondents in studies
of opinions about online degrees will rate an online degree from
Stanford the same as an on-campus degree, because the name of the
granting institution is recognized
See also
• Autonomous university
• Distance education
• Online degree
• Virtual learning environment
• Virtual school
• National University
• The Open University, Open Universities Australia
• Open University of Catalonia
• University of Phoenix
• University of the People
Learnig Content Library
OpenCollege e-Learning Content Library is the ultimate resource for
the Internet-based education of the future. It provides online course
developers, teachers, and students with access to more than 700
interactive learning models covering the following subjects
PHYSICS
Observe the laws of nature via your home computer.
more>>
CHEMISTRy
Elements matter. Investigate their properties here.
more
ASTRONOMY
The heavenly bodies have never been closer.
more>>
ECONOMICS
Mechanisms of generating wealth are brought to you free of charge.
more>>
Explore real life through interactive simulations.
more>>
Subscribe NOW for OpenCollege News Service. As a subscriber, you will
Virtual University
