Awesome Students

Last week, we had our twice annual Corporate Advisory Council meeting and it was a huge success because of the effort and work of our students.

Student team discusses how they are going to gain the learner's attention during the symposium.

Twice a year professionals from the field of instructional technology visit Bloomsburg University and provide feedback, advice, council and, in many cases, jobs to the students who have been working all semester on creating a 40 page written proposal, a working prototype, a 20 minute presentation and preparing for 15 minutes of questions and answers. You can see an example of “Winning” proposal presentation here. Yet, every team “won” in that they learned, gained confidence and honed their skills in the field of instructional technology.

Discussing the budget.

This semester, the students had the added burden of preparing for the live, in-person presentation all virtually. The class was conducted online until the final presentation. In every case, the students only met their fellow teammates face-to-face the day before their presentations.

Needless to say, the opportunity for mistakes and missteps is huge. But the results were spectacular. The 25 students presented as five teams and “wowed” the Corporate Advisory Council members who indicated that if they were not told, they never would have known that the students did not participate in face-to-face class sessions.

The challenge this semester was to respond to a Request for Proposal from the fictitious pharmaceutical company, Skendrie. The RFP requested a two part program, a one-day interactive instructor led virtual symposium and a post-event reinforcement and performance support curriculum delivered via mobile devices. The RFP was written by an alumni who also conducted the bidder’s conference and responded to questions from the students throughout the semester.

Answering questions from the corporate professionals.

During the semester, the students prepared for their presentation, studied the field of instructional technology and worked on learning how to write an effective proposal, create a compelling presentation and adeptly answer difficult questions in a high pressure situation.

In a world when so many academic institutions have lost their way and the leaders of those university’s put the university ahead of the students (and then charge the students a whole lot of money), it was refreshing to see such professionalism and support for the students.

On the first day of the event, our CAC members provide presentations to the students to show them examples of what is happening in the field. One presentation was of an effort to create and disseminate information about a charity that was formed to raise funds for cancer called RedCard Cancer. You can see the presentation on the web site here. The passion and enthusiasm about the effort to raise awareness and fight cancer was impressive.

Another presentation features one of our alumni who has started his own business and is now encouraging high school students to think like entrepreneurs and he featured in his courses interviews with our CAC members.

Mark Burke talks about teaching young students how to be entrepreneurs.

All in all, we had over 40 professionals from 21 different companies represented and those professionals not only evaluated the student performance but also provided advice, council and encouragement as they provided realistic and worthwhile feedback.

I am proud of the students, the university and our instructional technology department. In spite of all the craziness in the world of higher education, our students have risen above the madness and are prepare to “dent the field of instructional technology” and make it a better place.

If you want to get a better sense of the three days, you can see all the presentations here. (Click here and then go to Fall 2011 folder to see all the presentations.)