Anthony Kwasnica, an Associate Professor of Business Economics at Penn State University’s Smeal College of Business, recently teamed up with Smeal’s Research Instruction and Information Technology Group to create a virtual review session for EMBA students who couldn’t come to campus for a regular review session.
Kwasnica teaches Risk and Decisions, a core course in Smeal’s MBA program. The course is a heavily quantitative class that aims to teach students how to handle the complicated analytical problems that managers face when making decisions. Kwasnica teaches both residential and executive MBA students. He says that holding review sessions for the class can be a challenge for EMBA students, who can only meet on campus on alternating weekends.
Kwasnica wanted to hold a virtual review session that would be visual. “When you’re solving complex math problems,” Kwasnica said, “you want to be able to show how you’re working through each step.”
With the help of the Research Instruction and Information Technology (RIIT) Group, Kwasnica set up an Adobe Connect meeting. The group added a high-definition interactive display and screen-capture software to allow Kwasnica to write on a virtual screen in real-time. Half of Kwasnica’s EMBA class was able to attend the virtual review session, and the session was recorded so that students could refer to it when they were studying for the exam.
Kwasnica was pleased with the results of the review session: “Judging from the students’ performance on the last exam, I think the review session really had an impact.”
Kwasnica also used the Adobe Connect software throughout the semester to hold online office hours.
