tl;dr: SimCase is helping build an online course where each section of the syllabus is bolstered by a digital exercise.
We recently began work on a project that we think is a long time coming. When courses were forced to go online due to COVID, the silver lining we witnessed was that stakeholders began to consider how to make the experiences more active and engaging. While many students have gone back to on-campus courses, a lot of students have elected to continue to take virtual courses for reasons that span cost, preference, or convenience. For these students, the goal of making online learning more active and engaging remains, and we have begun working on an MVP to deliver against that need.
What’s New
The MVP was close to launch when we got looped in. We connected with the Academic Director who was working to innovate around their equivalent to Marketing 101. The goal was to offer a course that would bridge the gap between theory and practice, and where possible, allow students to apply these concepts. As a result, the video lectures and assignments they had created aligned well with the active learning elements we focus on building.
The novelty of this MVP is that every course module will be accompanied by a SimCase. Some of the activities are lead-ins to the material, designed to challenge assumptions the students may have, creating a solid foundation for learning. Other activities are direct applications of one of the module’s teaching points, typically set in both a local and international business context. Yet each is designed to permit the students to learn by doing in experiences that are short and straightforward, and thus easily digested.
Bridging the gap
It’s important to note that many of these exercises have been built from scratch, leveraging the rapid prototyping process we’ve been refining. The idea is to gauge the impact of this approach on student engagement, performance, and satisfaction. If that feedback is positive, then we’ll begin to explore what an entire active learning based platform might look like, and if it might begin to bridge the gap between university learning and on the job experience.
The path ahead
What is also new is that we intend to develop more robust prototypes as a part of this MVP, ones that offer some high-level feedback to the instructor. This MVP will provide valuable feedback for our team as well as we continue to define what this new product will eventually look like. With a little luck this could be the first step towards something game changing, or at least move the proverbial ball forward.
If you have feedback or would prefer a live walkthrough of one our activities, you can reach out to us here ([email protected]). We’d love to hear from you.
