Bloomsburg University’s CAC Event

Every year corporate professionals from the field of e-learning arrive in tiny Bloomsburg Pennsylvania to evaluate students in a our graduate program in instructional technology. The picture above shows all the students who participated.

The exercise is part of a class I teach called Managing Multimedia Projects. In the class, I form students into teams and have them each create a Proposal based on a Request for Proposal I design specifically for the class. The students must write a 40 page response to the RFP, create a working prototype and then deliver a 20 minute sales presentation. One the exercise is complete, one team is declared the “winner” but they are all winners because it prepares students to write and respond to RFPs and gives them insight into the business aspects of the e-learning field.

This year, the RFP was issued by the non-existent PA Department of First Responders. The ideas was that this government agency wanted to create training for security guards across PA in the areas of ship terminals, airports, truck terminals and other transportation hubs that may be subject to threats. The students worked for about a month writing the proposal and another two weeks working on a presentation. One of the requirements was that the second phase of the training had to be performed in a 3D envrionment like Second Life or some other 3D Metaverse. All but one of the four teams chose Second Life. The fourth team chose the Quake III engine.

Over 35 e-learning professionals attended the event and evaluated the students. In addition, they had a chance to interview students for internships and jobs. It really helps in the search for talent to see the students perform in a pressure situation.

The entries below outline the three day event. If you want to see the RFP, bidder’s conference questions and corresponding proposals. You can click here.

Read an alumni’s post about CAC here.
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