Student and tutor module reviews

As a business owner with plans to launch other businesses, I found that this course to a bit like a 'business start up buddy'. Everything contained within it helped to build an honest picture.

For months I had been working on an idea, but the course tasks and assignments gave me the real facts - that it wasn't profitable. Everyone should conduct financial projections and research their business ideas in full before progressing.

Assignments were challenging, yet rewarding.

Excellent course and has given me solid information to progress other ideas.

Christina Giliberti

Course starting: November 2011

Review posted: March 2013

This was an easy enough course even though I have jumped up from Level 1. I think I could have managed another 30-credit module with this.

If you have a business idea it gives you the tools and a structure to assess it. Do make sure, that you don't over complicate your idea and/or you choose something you are interested in, as it will bite you back.

Half of the workload is doing research about your idea and the TMAs build on each other and the EMA is the consolidation of your TMAs, so it is worth putting the effort in so the EMA will then be quite easy.

The tutor gave me good feedback, which gave me good pointers on how to build on my idea and TMAs. Overall I'm happy.

Course starting: November 2011

Review posted: July 2012

A good all round course that allows you to explore a new business venture or idea from initial concept through to marketing and possible launch.

However I found the structure of the TMAs and ECA to be very repetitive, in the 2009/10 presentation each TMA starts with a 500ish word question broken into four parts and then a 2000ish word report to be addressed to "an interested investor" with the ECA being exactly the same format and question.

Like many students the business idea we had and developed through the course did not require investment (in my case internet design based) meaning that of the total marks available for the course 60% related to investor reports. This meant the majority of study time was spent on inventing things to go into reports to non existent investors that were not required.

The ECA was primarily a copy and paste job from the previous 3 TMAs as it covers exactly the same material (including the investors report ) yet again

In summary if you have a business concept that you envisage completing as a sole trader without external investment think twice about this course, if on the other hand you are going for global domination in your project it will stand you in good stead

In its favour the course is well laid out and follows a natural progression through the blocks making for a good L3 course to study

Clinton Dale Hogben

Course starting: November 2009

Review posted: June 2010

I found this course to be pretty tough to me as it was Level 3 and I had only studied Level 1 courses up to that time.

I found myself surrounded by 30+ aged people with experience in business while I was only 22 and looking to start my own venture for the first time.

Even if I struggled and managed to get just a very tight pass, the result is that now I am getting a living from my online travel consultancy specialized in New Zealand, which is the idea I developed in the course, so I'm pretty sure the course helped me specially in getting focused in what had to be done.

If you enjoy a real challenge, then it's a great course to take if you are young and have no experience. Else, you should probably wait to take it at another time in your life and you'll find it a lot easier.

Daniel Alonso

Course starting: November 2008

Review posted: August 2009

This was an interesting course and has been a significant help in putting a business idea together so that it can be put into action in 2010/11. The TMAs were difficult to get my head around at first, with each building on the previous one so it seemed like a lot of repetition was needed. The ECA (at least there was no exam) was about 50% summary of the 3 TMAs and 50% new thinking.

There seemes to be a lot of emphasis on explaining how the idea was innovative or enterpreneurial, which does not always fit with a business idea.

The main advantage is that it has led to a much greater business idea and the confidence that it can be done (as long as I can earn a profit of £100 on a wet Tuesday in November!).

I would recommend this course to anyone who is starting up a business or looking to develop business knowledge, but would have doubts about how easy it would be to do as a purely academic course as there is a major (or total) emphasis on the business idea, and without that focus it would be difficult to develop ideas properly. That said, there were significant comments on the forums about the couse seeming too academic at times.

Finally, a major disappointment was not getting the ECA back with comments on it. A lot of work went into it and it would be useful to see tutor and examiner comments on the final thoughts about the feasibility of the enterprise.

Gwyn Philip Griffies Moses

Course starting: November 2008

Review posted: July 2009

B322 Developing Entrepreneurial Ideas is an unusual course in that it enables students to immediately apply the theories and concepts described to a real world business. Students need to have their own business idea that they want to focus on for the duration of the course. They explore the idea in depth, looking at what is good about the idea, what the barriers to success might be and then use B322 to fully explore how they will overcome the barriers. By the end of B322, in addition to hopefully gaining another 30 points towards a degree, students will have a much clearer idea as to whether their business idea can succeed.

It is a fantastic course to tutor as every TMA is unique (makes marking fun). It is great to see a student's idea become focussed and even better when an idea is good enough to actually launch as a real business.

Success stories as a result of B322 are sought out by the OU, so if you succeed come back and tell us about it.

Sue Curd

Review posted: January 2009