HOS 4050—Course Home Page

Course Overview and Objective

Welcome to HOS 4050, Meeting and Convention Management. This is a fast-growing field with many exciting job opportunities. This course deals with the issues that affect the management of large and small conventions, meetings, and events. We will cover meeting site selection, program planning and budgeting, legal issues, insurance implications, housing, food and beverage arrangements, transportation, exposition management, and audiovisual services.

The course consists of ten lessons. Each lesson covers two chapters from the text and a number of articles that provide additional perspective and insight. You will find a written assignment in each lesson as well as study questions.

This course home page provides the information you will need to get started, including the course requirements and links to the lessons.

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Required Textbooks

There are two textbooks required for this course:

The Complete Guide to Professional Meeting and Event Coordination by Catherine H. Price

HOS 4050 Coursepack.

You may purchase these texts from the Higher Grounds bookstore at the Friday Center in person, online, or by printing out a book order form and mailing or faxing it in.

About the main textbook

Cathie Price, the author of your main text, was an educator and a well-known meeting and event planner well before she wrote her initial book on meeting and event planning. She and I worked on our doctoral degrees together at Virginia Tech, where she wrote a dissertation relevant to the meeting and event field. I know Cathie and her book to be first class. All references to page numbers that you will see in this course refer to the main textbook unless otherwise noted.

Part One of the text is concise, easy to read, and explains the topics well. Part Two—the Quick Reference Guide (beginning on page 169)—includes dozens of lists and examples for the beginning and the more experienced meeting and event planner. These are wonderful how-to examples that ease the novice into the practical side of planning a convention or event. Many professional planners feel the Quick Reference Guide contains some of the most useful and practical information in the field.

In each lesson of this course, the Lesson Notes section elaborates on important areas of the assigned text chapter or the Quick Reference Guide. Most of the text's material is complete and needs no further discussion.

About the coursepack

Meeting and convention planning is a difficult course to teach using just a textbook. To include everything would require several books, and the industry changes so fast that no book can stay up to date for very long. The Price text does a good job of presenting different topics, but there is little space to provide perspective. For these reasons, a number of additional articles are required reading for this course. Many articles are available online, but those that were not online have been included in your coursepack. Even these articles are time-bound to some extent. To stay up to date on information in the field, it is important for you to read other current articles on the topics that you find independently.

Online articles

Your reading assignment for each lesson will include some online articles. In addition, the Internet Corner section of each lesson will refer you to various Web sites where you can find the latest information on the meeting, convention, and event fields.

A note about Web sites: Web sites are constantly updated and sometimes redesigned. I have described the sites the way I found them when I created this course. If I refer to you an item on a Web site and you cannot find it, please e-mail me at clarkjd@appstate.edu. I will update these course pages as I become aware of changes.

Course Requirements

Written assignments: 70 percent of grade
Final exam: 30 percent of grade

Written assignments (70 percent)

Your written assignments count 70 percent of your final grade. In some cases you will be asked to build on what you have put together in earlier written assignments. It is important that you keep the assignments you have done for possible future reference. Some assignments ask you to get information from various sources. Be certain to cite all reference materials you use.

Submit your written assignments according to the following instructions. Please proofread your work and keep a copy for your records. Your assignments must be double-spaced and submitted as attached Word files. If you do not have Word, save the file as a rich text format (.rtf) file.

Use the "Submit Your Assignment" button at the end of each Written Assignment to submit your assignment. This button provides you with an e-mail message that is pre-addressed to me and to Student Services at the Friday Center. Attach the file containing your assignment to that e-mail. If the Submit button does not work with your computer/browser, type both of the following addresses into a regular e-mail message:

clarkjd@appstate.edu
stuserv@unc.edu.

All assignments must have the following information in the Subject line of the e-mail: SPC HOS 4050 Lesson # and your name (example: SPC HOS 4050 Lesson 3 Jim Smith). This is essential for the Friday Center to keep track of your assignments.

Final exam (30 percent)

Your final exam counts 30 percent of your final grade. You must pass the final exam in order to receive credit for the course. You will need to schedule a time to take your exam with the Self-paced Courses office.

Each lesson has a section called "Possible Exam Questions." The final exam will consist of at least ten and no more than twenty of these questions verbatim. You might find it helpful to prepare note cards with the answers for each question for study purposes. I recommend that you answer these questions in detail while you are studying a particular lesson. The information will be freshest in your mind at that point.

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Online Resources

Useful Web sites

Each lesson in this course includes a section called "Internet Corner," where I provide links to useful Web sites that are related to the topics we have covered. I have combined the sites from all ten lessons on the Useful Web Sites page. You can refer to this page throughout the course when you want to look for information related to your area of interest. There is a link to "Useful Web Sites" in the gray bar at the top of this page and every lesson page.

UNC library resources

Students enrolled in Self-paced Courses can access online library resources from UNC Libraries at Library Services for Distance Education Students. This site includes information on using general online reference works as well as accessing e-reserves. The UNC library staff is available to assist any students who have difficulties accessing online library resources. If you encounter difficulties, please report your problem by visiting this Web page for reporting a problem.

HOS 4050: Meeting and Convention Management