Student-Faculty Teams Compete in Course-Innovation Contest

$90 million. 12 stories. Your ideas.

Three-person teams consisting of Drexel LeBow professors and students are competing for up to $46,000 in prize money by proposing course innovations that will take advantage of the technology and other enhancements featured in a new 12-story, $90 million building opening in fall 2013.

Classrooms will be equipped with video teleconferencing, the ability to make video recordings of lectures, on-screen notation capabilities and a full complement of computer, video playback and online access. The building will also include four computer labs.

In addition, classrooms will be configured in a variety of ways to facilitate different types of instruction and learning. Three “cluster” classrooms will each seat 45 students in pods that support both lectures and small-group work. Four more traditional “case” classrooms will each accommodate 60 students in a horseshoe seating arrangement commonly used for lectures. There will be 17 “collaboration” classrooms in which six to eight students can work on group assignments, as well as two auditoriums, one seating 100 and the other, 300.

“Having professors and students together on the same teams is a bit of ‘reverse mentoring,’” said Frank Linnehan, Ph.D., the interim dean of Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. “Our professors know their disciplines but it’s the students who really know what the technology is capable of. We’re asking students to advise their professors on how to get the most out of the new teaching tools and classrooms.”

Here’s how the contest works: Each team must consist of two full-time professors and one undergraduate or graduate student. By April 1, 2013, teams must submit proposals for innovations in at least two existing business courses. The proposals must address how the innovations will improve learning and how their effectiveness will be measured.

The winning teams will be selected in May and could present their proposals in June during Drexel LeBow’s annual Business Professor Teaching Summit, which attracts business teachers from throughout the East Coast. The winning innovations will be introduced into their respective courses for the 2013-14 academic year.

Depending on the number of submissions, total prize money could reach as much as $46,000, with a possible $28,000 prize for first place. Winnings will be distributed equally among the three team members.