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Business Presentation

This project will build upon the investment company scenario that I encountered in (see the attached file).

Your meeting with the CEO and other officers of the distance learning investment company will last for 35 minutes. You must get them to buy into your idea or the project will fade away.

You need to detail in depth what you plan in order to be prepared to give this presentation. In a Word document type out your plan which should include the following:

An outline of the presentation points (use these to develop PowerPoint)
List of materials needed
Image you want to portray and reasons for specific items needed to portray a particular image to your audience
What you plan to wear
Conclude with your unique strategy plan and approach to make the presentation memorable (incorporate at least four specific ideas to make it memorable).


Solution Preview

Distance education is a system and process that connects learners and instructors with educational resources from a variety of geographically separate sites using a variety of different media. Students and instructors are separated from each other by either distance of time. Two way communication exists between the learner, instructor, and other learners either through print or some form of electronic media. Though modern technologies have drawn more attention to the potential available through distance learning more, it is not a new idea. Correspondence courses date back to the 1800's with students receiving materials from their instructors, completing prescribed assignments, and returning then to the instructor for written feedback. Since that time, however, telephone lines, satellites, video and other electronic advances have made it possible to communicate with any number of individuals or groups instantaneously in remote areas at relatively little expense. Now with the aid of computers, students can complete formal education requirements in the comfort of their homes at any time drawing information from traditional sources as well as through the innumerable resources available through the World Wide Web. In today's fast-paced world, conventional wisdom tells us that we have to keep learning in order to advance professionally, financially and personally. Now the question becomes, how is this possible when work and family obligations prevent us from attending a former school setting? Since most traditional education systems are not accommodating to mature adults with busy lifestyles many professionals are actively seeking an alternative form of education. For such individuals distance learning may prove to be the ideal solution.
Within a context of rapid technological changes and shifting market conditions, the American education system is challenged to meet this growing demand without further increasing tuition fees. For this reason some educational institutions are starting to develop distance learning programs. These types of programs can offer opportunities not only to further one's education but also open the door to new career options.
Some educators question whether distant students learn as much as those receiving traditional face-to-face instruction. But recent research, comparing distance education to traditional instruction, indicates that distance learning can be as effective as traditional instruction.
Research further suggests that distant students bring basic characteristics to their learning experience which influence their success in coursework. Distance education students are voluntarily seeking further education and have post-secondary education goals with expectations for higher grades. They are also highly motivated and self-disciplined.
The idea that teaching and learning can successfully take place through electronic communication between teachers and students who are widely separated by space and time is a concept that has inspired both hope and dismay, as well as excitement and fear. In advanced industrial countries with high rates of literacy and school attendance and with abundant post-secondary educational opportunities, we find a burgeoning literature, most of which touts the "unlimited" possibilities of this "revolution" in education.
Some of the potential benefits for distance learners in both developed and developing countries include the greater access to education that distance learning offers (above all to what is increasingly referred to as the "non-traditional student"), flexibility of scheduling, the possibility of proceeding at one's own pace, and the opportunity to study without having to travel, indeed without leaving home.
In addition, for institutions that manage to persuade or oblige instructors to "bring their course online", the opportunity to reach distance students holds out the hope of great savings in the construction of classroom buildings, student housing, parking lots and other physical infrastructure, as well as substantial potential savings in teachers' salaries.
The advantages of distance education for the developing world are framed in terms of less expensive computer technology and the increasing speed and capacity of computers in relationship to their cost. In the face of the pressure on developing countries to join the global information economy, distance education appears to provide the opportunity to train more people better and at lower cost. At the same time, it has some serious drawbacks, even in its application in advanced industrial countries. These include cost and capital intensivity, time constraints and other pressures on faculty, isolation of students from instructors and peers, instructors' enormous difficulty in adequately evaluating students they never meet face to face, and drop-out rates that are far higher than in classroom-based courses.
Many of these fundamental problems are reproduced when distance programmes are exported to developing countries. As is known, the social impact of technological change is difficult to predict or foresee and, oftentimes, far from improving the quality of life or expectations of the powerless and the poor, the application of technology functions in strange and unexpected ways to reinforce the worst problems of inequality. The "digital divide" that polarizes the technological "haves" and "have-nots" separate the "wired world" from those without access to this technology, and within the developing world separate those who have the requisite levels of literacy and computer skills to make use of the Internet and other forms of communication from those who have not. Income, education, age, ethnicity, language and gender also separate the citizens of developing countries who have a reasonable hope of making use of electronic communication from those who have little or no hope whatsoever.
There are various ways to count the costs of providing distance education in developing countries. One problem is that most calculations based on "per-student" costs fail to take drop-out rates into account. Since there is a huge outlay of funds involved in producing new courses, some planners propose that the creation of course materials for developing country students could be offloaded onto some institution with more abundant resources in the industrialized world. But the "packaging" of courses for distribution in developing countries raises serious problems of creating culturally ...