Courses in CBS / Jenna

Hallo!

In this post I'm going to tell you something about all the courses that I am taking here at Cologne Business School this semester. I'm just going to introduce them shortly and tell my opinion of them.

All together I have 9 courses this fall. At CBS almost all of the courses belong to a module of two courses. In order to get a grade for the module, we need to pass both of the courses in it. And we cannot choose only one course from a module, it is mandatory to choose both of them! And inside the module, the other course has an exam and the other a coursework.

Organizational Behavior

The name of this course didn't really imply to me at all in the beginning of what the course is about. So I didn't really expect anything, when going to the first class. Luckily it turned out to be really nice! The course is about organizational behavior, so basically it is all about the people inside an organization. The course is kind of a combination of psychology and management. I find the course very interesting! The subject itself is interesting and also the teacher is very good, so I like this course a lot! And this is something that I haven't studied before, so I have learned a lot of new things! Luckily the course is good, because it is held on the worst possible time, Monday mornings at 8.45 :D This course belongs to the same module with Consulting Process -course, which I will tell about next.

Consulting Process

This course as the name suggests is about consulting and actually I chose the module because of this course. I found consulting interesting and have even considered it as a future profession, so I really wanted to take part in this course to learn more about it! During the course we are doing a huge coursework which is a lot of work! The project's aim is to create a strategy to better attract international students to CBS. In the project we are divided into smaller groups that will research different areas in order to create the strategy. I am in the competition group and our task is to research the competitors of CBS and to compare them to find out how CBS could improve it's competitive advantage.  We are doing the coursework like it was an actual project of a consulting agency. We are really learning what it is going to be like to work as a consultant. 

Ar first I thought that this is really interesting and that this really might be my thing, but as we went forward with the work, I started to doubt the idea of being an consultant. The work that I am doing now is basically just research and that is definitely something that I don't want to do in my future. Of course the position that you have in the company has an effect on the work you will do. So for example being a project manager would be totally different than working as a "junior consultant".  But still I know that just doing research is definitely not my thing! Still I do like the course and I feel that I am learning a lot! The teacher of the course is expecting a lot from the students and she is also really precise about the results of our work. 

Tourism Geography

Tourism Geography -course belongs to the same module with Event Management and I chose this module basically because of the Event Management -course. So this course really wasn't the one that interested me, but I still had to take it. I wasn't really expecting anything from the course, but I went there with a positive attitude, thinking it might be good. At first I thought that I had gone back to elementary school's geography class....:D In the beginning the teacher was telling us about the time zones, the continents and that when it is winter in Germany it is summer in Australia......It was hilarious, like don't they learn this stuff in the elementary school like we do....:D:D

Yeah, but after that we actually have talked about some real stuff related to tourism. For example how the climate change affects tourism and the other way around, and now we are looking at tourism in each of the continents one at a time. First this course felt like it was just waste of my time, but now I feel like it will get more interesting all the time. The subject itself isn't that challenging, but it is quite nice to have at least one course you don't have to worry about :D We are going to have an exam about this course at the end of the semester. 

Event Management

Event Management -course is the one that I was interested about and it definitely has reached my expectations. I really wanted to learn about event management, since we can't study it at my own school in Oulu. I have always been interested about event management so this was the perfect opportunity for me to learn about it. I have also considered event management as a future profession and this course has given me plenty of new information related to that! And after learning this info I am still considering it.. :)

The course has been really good and I have learnt a lot! The teacher of the course is also good and I like her teaching methods. She always gives us print outs and we have to write some stuff of the slides to the print out during the class, this way it is easier to stay focused. We are going to do a coursework of some kind during the course.

International Marketing

I had some doubts about taking the international marketing -course, since I feel like marketing is the only thing that we have been studying in Finland. We have had like 4 different courses about marketing and I really didn't want to hear the same things all over again...and why I chose this course if I don't want to hear the same stuff again, is that it belongs to the same module with International Human Resource Management and I needed to take that course. Luckily it turned out that I don't have  to hear the same stuff again.

The course is really interesting, especially the teacher is very good! He has his own way of teaching which is so good! He explains things by giving very simple examples and telling stories about normal life. He really knows how to teach. And also the course has a totally different perspective to international marketing than we have learned before. We are looking at marketing as a way of engaging people and trying to fulfill the expectations and needs of the customers not just trying to sell as much as possible. We are taking the customer side and really taking into consideration the customer. During the course we are doing a group work, which is to create a market entry strategy for a chosen company to entry a whole new market. Our group chose the grocery store Aldi and we want to create it a market entry plan for Finland. 

International Human Resource Management

This was the course that I should take now, so then I don't have to take it in Finland in the spring term. The course itself turned out to be okay. We have two teachers in the course which makes it a bit more difficult to learn. You can imagine having exam questions from two different teachers, you really don't know what to expect..:D

In my opinion the course is poorly planned. In each of the weekly classes there is so much theory that you really cannot handle that much information at once. The other teacher is pretty good, the only problem is that she speaks so fast and with all the information you just feel overwhelmed after the class. To be fair, I think she has good teaching methods. In the beginning of the class she always tells the learning objectives for the session and then in the end she also has few main question we should now how to answer based on the lecture. I find this a really good way of learning, but I wish there wouldn't be that much information stuffed in one class.

The other teacher of the course has a totally different way of teaching. She doesn't seem that comfortable teaching and she only reads all the information straight from the slides and doesn't explain anything. Unfortunately this makes it quite difficult to learn. We are having an exam of this course and there is going to be a lot of reading since we have 3 course books (not the whole book, but specific chapters) for it! :D

International Procurement

This course was also one that we were going to have after christmas in Finland, so we decided to choose it now that we don't have to take in the spring. I have already had a course in Finland called Purchasing and Procurement, so I had an idea what the course is about. The course has been solely about theory and just listening to the teacher. All of the classes are just theory and examples by the teacher and it isn't at all interactive. Because it is only about the teacher speaking, you really need to concentrate to learn something. I was hoping it to be more interactive, since it makes the learning more easy.

Comparative International Management

Comparative International Management is a course that I already have told you about briefly in the Trivago visit post. In this course we have learned about different management theories and we also have 3 company visits planned. One of the visits was the Trivago which I told about and then we are also going to visit the Köln-Bonn airport and Ford. In my opinion these company visits are a very good idea to help students learn the theory in practice. We actually have to write reports of all the visits and reflect the theory we have learned in class to the practice we see in the visits.

I think this course is really interesting and I am happy that I "had" to go to it. I actually did not choose this course but another management course, I didn't fit to the course I originally chose so then the school put me on this course! :D I very much wanted to learn about management since in Finland we don't have any management classes and I am interested in it a lot. 

German as a Foreign Language B1+

An important part of coming to Germany for an exchange period for me is to learn to speak German. So of course I chose the German course! In the beginning of the semester we had a placement test to see at what level we are in the German language. Based on the test (written and oral) we were divided into small groups. Me and Maiju ended up in the same group B1+, to get an idea what that means all the levels are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 ,C2. So basically we are in the middle. The classes have been okay, we have focused on speaking the language and also we have looked at some grammar. But mainly we are trying to improve our speaking, which is just what I want to do! 

So there they were all my courses here in Köln! Hopefully some of you could finish reading all that text :D As a summary, I am actually very happy with my courses. They all are quite different, so I am learning things from different areas which is always good for the future! I also find most of the course interesting and want to learn more about the issues. Of course there is a lot of work, but I guess there needs to be in order to learn! 

In the next post we are telling about when we went to the movies here in Köln!

Bis bald!

Jenna