“Boot camp” readies students to begin online MBA program

MBA boot camp participants perform a team-building exercise.

The first MBA “Boot Camp,” an extended weekend residency session that ties students in the online program more closely to Longwood and gives them an opportunity to meet their professors face-to-face, was held July 22-25, 2010.

Known officially as the “MBA Residency,” the on-campus experience was created to aid in the MBA program’s transition from traditional classroom instruction to online. “We added the residency to supplement online delivery with a face-to-face component,” said Abbey O’Connor, Longwood’s MBA director.

Sixteen students in the first online cohort group attended the 2010 residency and started online classes that fall. Part-time students in the MBA program (most study part time) have to attend three boot camps, and full-time students attend two. Boot campers experience the “7 Habits of Highly Successful People,” a ropes course, team-building exercises, case study reviews, guest speakers and final project presentations.

The theme for the 2010 camp was “Leadership Values and Ethics.” Related to the theme, all students were required to read The Ethical Executive by Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey prior to attending. As their final project, students developed a marketing plan for a local waste-management and recycling operation.

“The residency helps us to accomplish three things: establish the academic rigor that will be expected of all MBA students, develop relationships between faculty and students and help students develop their learning community, and orient new students to Longwood and the MBA program,” O’Connor said.

Summer camp uses video game design to interest students in STEM careers

Longwood’s ITTIP hosted Digispiredii, a summer academy focusing on video game design.

Tearing themselves away from a video game to do homework is a daily battle for some teenagers – but not for a group of high-school students studying at Longwood last summer. That’s because their homework was a video game.

Sixty-nine high-school students learned video game design in a two-week National Science Foundation-funded project coordinated by Longwood’s Institute for Teaching through Technology and Innovative Practices (ITTIP).

Digispired ii Summer Academy, part of Digispired ii: Workforce Investigation Inspiration for STEM project, was held July 12-23, 2010, at Longwood, Virginia State University and the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center in South Boston. This was the first year of a three-year effort that continues an earlier three-year, NSF-funded project also called Digispired.

The Digispired project, which consists of a two-week summer program and activities throughout the school year, seeks to interest students in careers in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM).

“The grant is not just about game design; it’s about motivating these students to explore and understand STEM-related fields and careers,” said Dr. Manorama “Mano” Talaiver, ITTIP director and the principal investigator of Digispired. Participating students interact with professional game design experts, meet with graduate engineering students who provide hands-on instruction on sensors in game controllers, visit the Science Museum of Virginia and learn the programming language C#, which is necessary to create advanced games.

The ITTIP, which serves primarily 25 public school divisions and is headquartered in South Boston, is an outreach of Longwood that researches and develops effective technology-related instructional strategies and models.