SBAJ: Volume 11 Number 1 (Spring 2011) Pages 1 - 11 A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF STUDENT ADVICE FROM ONLINE QUANTITATIVE MBA COURSES Blake A. Frank, University of Dallas, Irving, TX Robert J. Walsh, University of Dallas, Irving, TX ABSTRACT Online courses have been the subject of much research and analysis over the past 15 years. Course structure, faculty and student workload and the characteristics of the ideal student for an online course have all been topics of research, study and debate. This study examines the question of “what is the ideal online student?” An open-ended question administered with the final examination - “what advice would you give to a student entering this course?” – was answered by 378 MBA students (248 males, 130 females) at one southwestern United States university over a period of three years (2008-2011) in four different types of quantitative online courses taught by six different instructors. Each answer was scored using the English Regressive Imaginery Dictionary, a content analysis coding scheme designed to measure conceptual thinking based on certain key