Need
Translate a highly social, activity-driven classroom course into a primarily asynchronous experience without losing peer interaction, experimentation, or immediacy.
MG-GY 6013: Organizational Behavior
MG-GY 6013: Organizational Behavior
How do you preserve the social energy of an interaction-heavy course when moving it online?
For NYU Tandon’s graduate Organizational Behavior course, we created a distributed learning environment spanning interactive, media-rich Rise modules, Google Community conversations, weekly virtual teamwork, and synchronous digital simulations. And students noticed, specifically shouting out the innovative approaches to delivering such an interaction-heavy course through a virtual, mostly asynchronous classroom. But the students weren't the only ones to notice, as our work received the NYU Tandon Online Course Development Team Award for excellence and innovation in development.
AT A GLANCE
- Context
Educational TechnologistNew York University2018
Solution
Reconstruct classroom presence as a connected learning ecosystem in which asynchronous preparation feeds ongoing community conversation and recurring team-based practice.
Deliverable
A 14-module online course with original Rise-based lessons, custom Qualtrics interactions, Google Community discussions, weekly team meetings and live virtual sessions, and collaborative leadership simulations.
Impact
Students rated the inaugural course 4.7/5 overall, and it earned NYU Tandon’s Course Development Team Award. This version of the course was offered at least three more times over the next four years.
Takeaway
This was my first course developed in close collaboration with others, and it showed me both the value and the limits of the creative problem-solving I had cultivated as an adjunct. I learned to trade some ambitious ideas for simpler solutions that faculty and students with different levels of technical confidence could adopt, sustain, and scale. My university teaching experience also helped me earn the trust of a faculty partner who was initially skeptical of online learning—and ultimately demonstrate that the course could meet her expectations without losing what made the classroom experience work.
Methods & Tools: Articulate Rise · Qualtrics · Google Community · Simulations: Mount Everest & Change Pro · Learning Glass