Personal Perspective Paper

PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE PAPER

Personal Perspective Paper

Magaly Castro

University of Phoenix

MBA 500

June 6, 2006

Personal Perspective Paper

The University of Phoenix is tailored towards allowing working professionals to be able to balance their careers with their professional lives. Its unique curriculum promotes academic success for working professionals seeking a higher education. This productive system makes higher education more attainable, efficient and relevant to the real-world. The three most valuable components of this wonderful curriculum consists of: The value of rEsource, learning teams and problem-based learning.

The Value of rEsource

The value of having rEsource available throughout the program has proven to be very effective. rEsource is a tool found directly on the student website and serves several purposes. rEsource provides a paperless book which may be kept by the student for years to come. rEsource allows students to download books from a personal computer with Adobe Reader, facilitating the ability to cut and paste quotes directly from rEsource, something not possible to do with the traditional textbooks. This is just one of the many tactics that is very useful in the completion of assignments, which will lead to achieving a degree at the end of the program.

The University's online library provides articles from thousands of available sources, which can save tons of time, since one no longer has to physically travel to a library to obtain the needed information. Another benefit is the fact that citations are usually included in these articles for students to reference. rEsource becomes a true time saving asset for students in the work environment by allowing access to information instantly. Owning the actual textbooks commonly leads to having these books stored away in a garage or occupying space in some closet. rEsource is also a convenient way to communicate amongst our learning teams.

The Value of Learning Teams

Learning Teams create "collaborative learning environments" in which working adults are given the opportunity to share knowledge coming from life and work experiences. Through these learning teams, research has confirmed that they fulfill several functions, especially beneficial to working adult learners.

There will always be different perspectives in a learning team due to the fact that each person will more than likely be coming from different type of work environments. This allows for teams to share and discuss different scenarios, which one may find useful at work or at home. Working in teams will possibly instill innovative ways to develop or improve us with our own personal and work environments.

Although learning teams serve many good quality purposes and allow us to accomplish a lot more than working individually, there are also several challenges that may be faced. During the process of making decisions, chaos can occur. All people are unique having different opinions, working styles and ways of thinking. Of course, these traits can be positive just as much as they can be negative. It is very important to be able to join these learning teams with an open mind and learn to interact with every person in the team. It is also very important to be considerate of other opinions and ideas.

Communication is one of my most important approaches in leading an effective team. Team members should be able to learn to communicate task priorities, responsibilities, due dates amongst each other in order to allow projects to run smoothly. Other approaches include, organization, time management, giving and taking constructive criticism amongst many others. Finally, another way to avoid any additional challenges is to become familiar with Problem-Based Learning.

The Value of Problem-Based Learning

Problem-based learning offers learners a "realistic scenario from which they must distill a problem that merits solving, apply a problem-solving approach to develop and analyze alternative solutions,