Peer Review

The Strategic Audit

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Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: The module provides an overview of some of the most common tools
used in strategic analysis. These are organized into short modules with
hyperlinks. In addition, a sidebar contains additional modules to other popular
and well known strategic planning tools. Hyperlinked text with some
illustrations.
Type of Material:: Tutorial. Reference material. Possibly useful for summary reviews for exams.
Recommended Uses:: This serves as an undergrad exam review in a strategy class. The material is too
cursory for use in an in-depth seminar on strategy or an MBA-level class. It
seems a bit thin to be a good ?tutorial,? as claimed by the document.
Technical Requirements:: Browser.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: Summary and Overview of frameworks useful for strategy audits. To become
familiar with some of the most frequently used tools in conducting a
strategic audit.
Target Student Population:: College-level business undergraduate students
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: These materials are normally taught in capstone strategy courses at the
end of a degree program (typically, at this level for undergrads). Introduction
to Business course.

Rating:
Strengths:: Overall, the quality of content is good, albeit brief and cursory. The major
tools such as Resource Audit, Value Chain analysis, Core Competence Analysis,
Performance Analysis, Portfolio Analysis, SWOT are covered.

It seems most suitable as review material. It is essentially a highly
summarized, hyper-linked textbook segment (maybe equal to one compressed chapter
that reviews economic perspectives on strategy formulation).
Concerns:: This is not an in-depth module. Students will not learn any module in-depth, nor
be familiar with the basic assumptions of each tool. The module does not add
that much value over a textbook. In some cases, it over-simplifies the
material. Further, assumptions underlying each perspective are not discussed.
The connections between perspectives are also not mentioned. It is not actually
particularly useful as an audit tool, except to inform of the potential tools,
any of which would need to be studied in considerably more depth to be of
practical use.

Rating:
Strengths:: This site could be used to help students review strategic audit tools. It is
essentially a highly summarized, hyper-linked textbook segment (maybe equal to
one compressed chapter that reviews economic perspectives on strategy
formulation).
Concerns:: The site does not add much value over a textbook, since it over-simplifies the
material. It does not go into the assumptions underlying each perspective.
There is minimal mention of connections between perspectives. The worst problem
is the super-cursory nature of the material. I would not make it my students?
first exposure to a comparison of perspectives. It is not actually particularly
useful as an audit tool, except to inform of the potential tools, any of which
would need to be studied in considerably more depth to be of practical use.
Also, it lacks good case examples of how the tools could be applied.

Rating:
Strengths:: You can access this material in a browser window. It is fairly easy to read,
though the font could be one size larger. The writing is coherent, if not
detailed.
Concerns:: The hyperlinking is not done very well which makes it somewhat frustrating to
use. I need (at least) to be able to jump back to the start-page from the linked
explanation pages. Links to other more in-depth web-resources would be
appreciated. Links to primary outside resources would be laudable (e.g., Porter,
1980 for competitive analysis).

Other Issues and Comments:: Some of the basic functionality or content of Tutor2u seems lacking, i.e., the
Key Terms functions. Once this is brought online for this module, the tool
should be more useful at least as a source of terms definitions.
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