Legal Problems are Business Problems
In an online MBA program, communicating career impact drove every decision in redesigning a required course on business law.
Project Brief
MBA 8030: Law, Ethics, and Governance is a core MBA course that had to be redeveloped as a fully online asynchronous minimester (7 week) offering to support the Online MBA program at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business (RCB). This course design project is a part of a longer term program design project (fully online MBA) that I also supported.
Tools
D2L Brightspace
Kaltura
FeedbackFruits
HTML
CSS
Qualtrics
Miro
PowerPoint
My Contributions
Led project team including SME, multimedia designer, learning technologist
Guided faculty through course mapping (goals, scope, sequence) and content creation and curation
Developed all new assessments
Designed and built LMS site and integrated learning tools
Ensured course was fully accessible and compliant (WCAG, section 508, UDL)
Provided full service consulting and technical support during pilot semester
Developed and implemented feedback instruments to support iterative design cycle
Asking questions, lots of questions
Like all my projects, I began this one by listening and asking lots of questions. I came out of our initial meetings with some key findings that shaped the how we designed the whole course.
Students need this course, but they approach the course like an obligation instead of an opportunity - how could we make this course feel “real” and vital?
Students perform best when engage with the material every week (not just before midterm and final) - how do we keep students in the course every week?
Student and faculty’s favorite part of the class? “Story time” digressions into the faculty’s professional experiences - how can we bottle spontaneous expertise?
Our biggest challenge though, was transitioning from a face-to-face course to a fully online asynchronous offering to meet the needs of the new Online MBA program - how do we create a learning destination?
Project planning
After initial intake meetings, I developed project plan that took into account both my standard design process and the particular circumstances of this project, including a condensed development schedule (~5 weeks less than usual) and a mini-mester (7 week) course pilot. Our next few meetings focused on mapping out the course. We used Miro to visualize our plans and make playing around with the content and activity sequence a breeze.
Bottling Expertise
My faculty partner, long-time RCB and School of Law professor John P. Thielman, Esq., already had quite a following, so we prioritized making the online course as dynamic and engaging as John’s face-to-face courses. We achieved this by capitalizing on his expertise in new instructor videos and case examples drawn from his professional experience as a former prosecutor, chief counsel with a Fortune 500 insurance company, managing attorney, and trial attorney.
Instructor Videos
During course mapping, I had John identify bottleneck concepts. I then had him reference impactful examples from his career to include in scripts for new videos. From there, I supervised script development, the studio shoot, and post-production for 8 new videos, mostly direct address but also one incredible motion graphic explainer video.
Based on engagement analytics (pulled from Kaltura) that we tracked over the pilot, we re-titled many videos to match the instructor’s often provocative approach.
Subject Matter Expert
Based on previous student feedback, John knew that his professional experience was something students really valued so we needed to find a way to bring his skill as a storyteller in the classroom to the online learning environment. Wherever I could, I embedded narratives and images of his first-hand experience into the flow of content, like in the course page example below where we detailed a case alleging business negligence that was actually tried in Georgia (along with an image used in the real case) below a section explaining the legal defenses to negligence allegations.
HTML content page with concept definition, “Legal Defenses to Negligence Allegations,” followed by example, with evidence photo, from actual a case of woman walking into utility ladder then bringing a negligence suit against utility company.
Creating a learning destination
We made the course site (D2L Brightspace) more like a destination than just a repository, replacing PDF overviews with interactive HTML pages, leveraging online assessment and grading tools, and laying it all out in modules with a consistent instructional plan.
Instructional Plan
Early on in the program-level planning for the new Online MBA project, we determined that all courses should include an “Instructional Plan” that would help faculty give students some guideposts to look to as they navigated the course.
For MBA 8030, I borrowed from legal terminology to outline a 3-part workflow for each module: “Brief” (module introduction), “Discovery” (learning materials and formative exercises), and “Closing” (assessments). Students first see the instructional plan explained in the syllabus, then they see it populated with module-specific tasks at the beginning of each module.
Interactive Content Pages
As John would describe how lively his face-to-face lectures were, I realized I needed a way to replicate that engagement online with low-stakes interactivity.
For a particular lecture on avoiding discrimination in interviews, John described polling students off the cuff about whether certain interview questions were allowed or not. We determined this interaction didn’t rise to the level of actual assessment activity, but we still wanted students to have that self-testing experience. My solution in this case was to embed custom flip cards using CSS.
Making it “real”
We leaned into some of John’s existing discussion activities and used interactive tools like FeedbackFruits to get students to feel the stakes of real-world scenarios.
“Back to Bellagio’s”
In the face-to-face version of his class, John always included a discussion on the first day where he would throw out hypothetical scenarios at an imaginary restaurant and have students guess which of the scenarios had legal implications and how worried about it should they be if they were the owner of the business. John felt that this activity was a great icebreaker, but couldn’t imagine how it would translate to an online asynchronous experience. But I could!
We turned this one-off activity into a centerpiece narrative that was threaded through every module of the course. We first made sure every major course topic was represented in a scenario and could be tied to an area of law that was covered in the course. Next, rather than presenting the scenarios as simple text narrative (the original activity was a 1 page text-only handout), I paired the scenarios with evocative imagery in a slide deck. We preserved the interaction of this activity by using FeedbackFruits to gate students progression through the activity with self-test questions. Finally, we brought the scenarios full circle by including them again on end-of-module quizzes.
“What’s the Damage?”
In his face-to-face class, John had always run this activity as a mock jury - I knew I had to adapt this activity for his online course. First I turned his single-page case brief handout into a slide deck, then I use again used FeedbackFruits to create an activity where students could review the facts of the case, then be forced to stop and provide their own answer to a prompt, then be able to see how their peers responded and try to persuade them!
“What’s the Damage” FeedbackFruits activity with thoughtful and specific student responses to prompt, “Come up with a dollar amount to make this family whole with money.”
Learning every week
Following evidence based practice, I persuaded John to move away from high stakes exams, instead replacing them with weekly quizzes to promote “sticky” learning and a semester-long authentic assessment that helped students translate what they learned from the course into something they could refer to in their future careers.
“Biz Law Breakdown”
In previous versions of the course, John had often shared his take on core legal concepts as “JT’s Rules of Law.” Initially, we planned to incorporate concept summaries from his perspective throughout the course, but later decided that memorizing someone else’s “take” would be far less impactful than guiding them to internalize these concepts from their own perspective, connecting them to their own experiences.
Excerpt from project instructions:
You'll learn about a lot of legal topics this semester, but when you finish the class, what will you really know?
For this assignment, you'll showcase your understanding of legal topics by breaking them down and explaining them in your own words. Throughout the course, you'll create a comprehensive journal covering 10 key business law topics that are essential for MBA students. Each entry should feature a summary and a reflection on its business implications. The final journal will be due at the end of the semester but will be developed through continuous effort each week.
This isn't just any journal—it's your go-to guide as you advance in your career, packed with insights into foundational legal principles in business. You'll be building your knowledge step-by-step, applying class concepts along the way. By the end of the course, you'll have a powerful reference tool, developed through continuous effort each week. Let's make business law your secret weapon!
Student Feedback
“ This course turned out to be more valuable than I expected. The Bellagio scenarios helped bring the material to life and made the legal concepts easier to understand. I appreciated the structure and how everything tied together across modules. If I had to give any advice to future students, it would be to stay consistent with the journal work; it really helps things click.”
“Taking this course has truly been an incredibly valuable experience in my MBA journey. Stepping into the world of business leadership, I’ve realized how important it is to understand the legal side of every decision we make. Before this class, I didn’t always think about how the law is connected to daily business actions, but now I see it everywhere, from protecting ideas to managing people and building ethical companies. Each journal topic pushed me to reflect on my own professional journey and imagine the kind of leader I want to become. Learning these concepts has helped me grow academically and given me the tools to be more confident, thoughtful, and prepared for whatever comes next. This class has made me feel more empowered, and for that, I’m incredibly grateful.”
“Working with my classmates, even virtually, was a highlight. Reading your perspectives on cases and discussions pushed me to think beyond my initial opinions like in the Disney case, and it reminded me how valuable collaboration and diverse viewpoints are in business. I’ve learned just as much from you all as I did from the class.”
“The Biz Law Breakdown was very useful in applying legal ideas to actual situations since this course helped me to view law as a strategic tool for companies. Future students should remain involved with the tasks since these are where the actual learning takes place.”
“This asynchronous class is a breath of fresh air. The structure of the iCollege page, syllabus, and content makes it so much easier to stay motivated and complete the work—and trust me, I know. I recently had to speak with a dean about another asynchronous class that was the complete opposite of this one. In that class, I struggle to get through the work and feel like I have no direction. But in this class, everything is laid out so well that I rarely have questions because the content and workload are perfectly balanced. Definitely one of the best and most informative classes at J. Mack Robinson!”
