1. Microbiology and Genetics
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Assistant Professor of Biology Rebecca Rivard, PhD, loves playing games and solving puzzles, but don’t mistake her for a casual fan. With a firm belief that games can improve engagement and solidify concepts and learning, Dr. Rivard routinely uses card games, board games and even virtual puzzle games in some of her classes. What makes this so different is that she conceptualized, designed and built the educational games she uses.

In Microbiology and Genetics, a class designed for Nursing students to get a broad grounding in microbiology and human genetic concepts, Dr. Rivard has incorporated virtual puzzle games into the curriculum. While the concept is similar to that of popular escape rooms, she prefers the term "puzzle game," since the goal is not always to escape. In one, students must find the antibiotic that will treat a patient, not necessarily escape the hospital.

In total, Dr. Rivard has created three puzzle games for the class: one for microbiology and two—one beginner and one more advanced—for genetics. The games help reinforce topics taught in class, including microbe type, transmission and antibiotic resistance, as well as genes, inheritance and mutation.

“These games allow students—in a fun, low-stakes environment—to fail and then figure out how to do something correctly before they take an exam. Before I began using games, students would often hear something in a lecture and think they understood it, but they didn’t interrogate that truth for themselves. So when it came time for the exam, they would realize, ‘Oh, no. It turns out I did not understand what was discussed in lecture,’” says Dr. Rivard. “Since they complete the games in groups, it also gives them an opportunity to learn from peers, who in turn improve their own understanding of the material.”

Dr. Rivard currently uses PowerPoint to create the interactive elements, and while they are quite polished, she would like to create an experience that is even more sophisticated. With her sights set on being able to write code, she is auditing a class to learn the programming language R, but that may not be enough to achieve the ultimate objective. “I may take some Computer Science courses to learn how to make a video game,” she says.

Her goal is to incorporate educational games into more of her classes, especially since the response from students has been overwhelmingly positive. “Active learning is a really powerful tool, so I want to use that to bring students into the material,” says Dr. Rivard. “Games keep the topics fresh for me as well because it keeps me thinking of new ways to communicate the information.”

2. Design Analytics and AI
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Growing up as the grandson of a grocer who owned several stores in Western New York, Steve Mahar, PhD, ����ֱ�� University Endowed Professor in Business and professor of Business Analytics, developed an appreciation for the art—well, science—of process improvement. “It was always about fiddling with things to make them better,” he says. With his robust intellectual curiosity, experience as a mechanical engineer and background in disciplines such as operations, management and decision sciences, it’s no surprise Dr. Mahar is among the University’s many faculty embracing AI in the classroom.

“Finding ways to use technology to do things more efficiently is a bit of a hobby for me,” says Dr. Mahar. It’s a mindset he tries to impart to his students in Decision Analytics and AI, a course that bridges traditional analytics with real-world applications of artificial intelligence.

The first 25% of the course reviews three core areas of analytics—data management, data mining and decision modeling—using familiar software. On this foundation, the course shifts to leveraging generative AI tools across these domains. Students learn how large language models like ChatGPT work; develop skills in prompt engineering and Application Programming Interface interaction; and apply these capabilities in varying ways to improve business decision-making.

“Anyone can type a question into ChatGPT–but I want my students to go deeper,” Dr. Mahar says. “I teach them how these models actually work, how to interact with them effectively, and how to validate and refine the outputs they generate. It’s not magic–it’s about understanding how the tools work well enough to use them iteratively and reliably to improve real business decisions.”

The goal is always to improve decision-making in business. Using real-world problems from different functional areas in business, such as marketing, management or finance, students explore how to use AI to work more efficiently or automate tasks that before took a long time to complete.

“Solving modern business problems isn’t always a straight line from point A to B,” Dr. Mahar says. “I tell my students, ‘You have to trust me a bit, but I’m arguing that if you go from A to W to T to V to B, you can actually be more efficient.’ I want to teach them how to use the tools creatively, ethically and effectively so they are better positioned in a competitive job market.”

3. Basics of Entrepreneurship
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Professor Ann Goody, MSEd, knows a thing or two about innovation. As the Daniel J. Hogarty, Jr. ’61 Director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, not only is she the driving force behind the institute’s programs, but she also teaches students how to develop business ideas in Basics of Entrepreneurship. The course is a key component of the Entrepreneurship Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies program in the College of Professional Studies.

For the online course, Professor Goody assembled a creative lineup of learning opportunities that go beyond the textbook. Podcasts and films that offer both success stories and cautionary tales from real-life entrepreneurs are blended with design-thinking exercises and interactive projects that allow students to put their ideas to the test.

In one simulation from Harvard University, students launch a mobile food-based business, choosing between a food truck or food cart and then selecting a type of food to sell and place in which to sell it. Students evaluate how their choices impact sales over a simulated six-week period. “It's intended to help students learn to experiment with entrepreneurship because one of the goals of entrepreneurship is not to guess at what people want and need, but to go out and try it,” says Professor Goody.

Using the Snake Oil card game, students randomly select a persona card and two product cards. The challenge lies in combining the product cards—resulting in what is likely a nonsensical product, such as a moon ladder—and figuring out how to sell it to the selected persona, which might be a figure skater, for example.

“It’s about coming up with a pitch on the fly, and it's valuable because it helps students be really creative—and even silly—about it. But that's often what you must do for a normal pitch,” says Professor Goody. “If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank, they can be pretty silly, but that is what gets people's attention. The game helps them figure out who a customer is and how to sell.”

4. Business Aspects of Law
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Before returning to ����ֱ�� as a member of the faculty in 2021, Associate Professor of Law Luke Repici ’02 JD spent 19 years practicing law as a partner in a Philadelphia firm. During that time, he often served as a panelist for Business Aspects of Law, a required module for first-year (1L) students held in the Charles Widger School of Law each spring. Now, he teaches it.

Created more than 10 years ago, the 1L module is a weeklong, one-credit experience that gives every student a comprehensive understanding of the business side of law. Morning sessions feature panels of leading lawyers and legal service providers from firms that vary in size and type. “We try to cover a broad swath of environments in which students could potentially find employment, including large companies, boutique firms, nonprofits and government,” says Professor Repici.

In the afternoon sessions, students are presented with problem-solving challenges in which they act as in-house counsel, making decisions regarding budget and staffing. They also gain an understanding of billable hours, realization rates, revenue streams and client retention.

Together with the required module for second-year law students—Joseph Del Raso Business and Financial Literacy for Lawyers, which is taught by Associate Professor of Law Jane Voegele ’90 CLAS, ’90 VSB, ’96 JD and focuses on finance and accounting—the 1L module offers early exposure to practical business knowledge and potential networking opportunities.

“The time frame for employment just keeps creeping up and up, so students are talking with potential employers in their very first year at law school,” says Professor Repici. “The modules take business-related information that, in my experience, law students—and even junior lawyers—didn't know historically, and gives it to them at a very early stage in their career. These topics used to be like the Great and Powerful Oz pulling levers. Now, our students get it all while they’re still in law school, and it empowers them to make thoughtful employment decisions.”

5. Simulation in Higher Education and Health Care

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All students in the M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing spend time engaging in hands-on learning in the school’s accredited simulation center, but for some graduate students, the experience goes even further. As a result of a successful pilot program, all students in the two-year, 33-credit master’s program in Nursing Education will learn how to teach using the simulation center.

In Simulation in Higher Education and Health Care, students—all of whom are seasoned nurses—learn best practices of simulation methodology and the research that supports it. Then, in an immersive two-day experience that caps the required course, students lead their peers through a simulation they designed.

During that time, they gain experience working with virtual reality, high-fidelity equipment and standardized patients, who are people trained to portray patients with specific health concerns. “But what makes this course exciting is that students come into the center, set up their own simulation, teach it to the other students in the class and then receive instant feedback on the simulation they created,” says Clinical Professor Gail Furman, PhD, RN, CHSE-A, who is executive director of the Simulation and Learning Resource Center.

“It's immersive and innovative because they are not just learning how to teach from a book or from lectures, or shadowing another nursing instructor,” says Bette Mariani, PhD, RN, ANEF, FAAN, vice dean for Academic Affairs and professor. “They are actually creating and facilitating a simulation from start to finish, which doesn't always happen.” What’s more, before developing their simulations, students conduct a needs assessment at their workplaces to identify areas where their coworkers would benefit from more education. “As a result, students can take their simulations back to their clinical areas and implement them, which is pretty unique,” Dr. Mariani says.

“Simulation, when done well, is a fun way to learn,” says Dr. Furman. “This is a powerful tool for an educator’s toolbox.”

6. Letters, Texts, Twitter
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A quick look at the syllabus for English 4652 includes content one would expect in an English course. Essays from James Baldwin. Letters from Emily Dickinson and John Keats. A novel by Patricia Lockwood. But then there are also … tweets? Clearly Letters, Text, Twitter is no ordinary English course.

Associate Professor of English Kamran Javadizadeh, PhD, has loved letter writing ever since his family immigrated to the United States from Iran. “We left a lot of extended family in Iran when we moved to California, and I remember what it was like for my mother to receive a letter,” he says. “I can picture the airmail envelope and the crinkly paper inside. This was the way news was communicated, feelings were shared and intimacy was maintained over really vast distances.”

The poetry scholar, who finds there’s “something magical” in the act of reading his favorite poets’ mail, designed the course to study epistolary writing. “By that, I mean letter writing, but also things up to and including email, text messaging and social media interactions. Reflecting on their personal use—as sender and receiver—of these forms as well as fictionalized versions of this type of writing in books on the syllabus, we study how this ordinary use of language that we engage in every day interacts with literary form. We read poems and novels and essays that in some ways borrow from or adapt the tropes and techniques of epistolary writing.”

Typically, very few—if any—hands are raised when Dr. Javadizadeh asks if any students have written a letter (thank you notes and cover letters don’t count) in the past year, but nearly all have sent a text or direct message on social media that day. “Part of the value of the class is that it makes students think critically about something that's part of how they live but that they haven't thought about in those terms yet. They haven't connected with John Keats writing a letter to his girlfriend, but there are real resonances. That’s not to say that texting is the same as letter writing, but there are continuities that exist and discontinuities that are interesting to examine.”

7. Quantitative Physiology
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Quantitative Physiology is a required course in the new interdisciplinary Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering program, but it’s not the physiology class one might expect—in more than one regard.

For starters, the course is an intersection of core engineering principles with physiology. It uses applied math and physics concepts to describe the mechanisms and functions of each major physiological system within the human body, including aspects of anatomy, biochemistry and biophysical elements. This understanding is essential for biomedical engineers, who design artificial systems, models and interactions with the body.

“We look at how systems of the body and cells work, but we do so through an engineering lens,” says Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering Laura Bracaglia, PhD. “Not only do we want to describe the molecules and what they are by identity, but we want to describe how fast they interact with one another.”

While the class itself is common to biomedical engineering programs, Dr. Bracaglia is taking an uncommon approach to how the material is taught. Content for a quantitative physiology course is typically introduced by the body system first, followed by the relevant engineering concept. Dr. Bracaglia flipped the script.

“Students in most physiology courses learn about bones, then the lungs, then the kidneys and so on,” says Dr. Bracaglia. Here, content is organized and introduced by engineering concept first, rather than by body system, to better link the topics to content the Engineering students have already learned. For instance, Dr. Bracaglia might review thermodynamics and mass transfer—and then point out parts of the body where those equations apply. “It’s easier to understand the engineering of the body once you start from a place of known understanding.”■