A Classic Topic Meets Modern Media: HWM 770 Media Case Study

By Jessica O'Neel

What’s a topic in your course that’s tried and true, but somehow doesn’t resonate as you’d hoped? Or one that doesn’t quite match the modern landscape your students are heading into?

For Dr. Stacey Peterson, instructor of HWM770: Behavior and Development in Organizations, that topic was leadership styles. While the frameworks are evidence-based, well-researched, and tested, the environment in which students will actually practice that leadership has changed. Leadership today plays out on video calls, in chat threads, and across time zones just as often as it does around a conference table. Dr. Peterson, Instructional Designer Jennifer Jaworski, and Media Specialist Jack Childers set out to find a way to teach this long-standing content, but update the format so it reflects the reality students will step into.

Teaching Theory with Scenarios

What they came up with was a discussion assignment built around a virtual wellness program. Students watch four short video clips (2-3 minutes each), each showing a different leader supporting remote employees through the program — and each demonstrating a different theory: Path-Goal Theory, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Transactional Leadership, and Transformational Leadership.

For their initial post, students choose one scenario to analyze in depth: naming the theory it demonstrates, identifying the leader’s specific behaviors using theory-specific language, and connecting those behaviors to employee motivation, engagement, and participation. Then, in a reply post, students respond to a classmate who chose a different scenario — comparing the two leadership approaches, considering which theory fits the situation better, weighing the benefits and challenges of that style in a virtual setting, and thinking through when a different leadership style might work better instead.

⭐ Check out the activity to view the scenarios.

Modernizing the Content & Trying Out New Tools

As the activity shows, the leadership theories haven’t changed, just how students are applying them in the modern—often remote-based—workplace.

Revising the assignment to apply the theories to a modern-day workplace also gave the faculty and course design team the opportunity to use new tools to create the scenarios.

The scenarios were created using AI-generated voices. Simulating the remote meeting featured in each scenario turned out to be a great test case for these tools: the format is inherently a screen-and-voice medium, so AI-generated voices worked well, compared to scheduling on-camera performances.

Having these types of tools available will give your course development team more options and flexibility when it comes to writing scripts, making changes, and using diverse personas. This can make a course feel more personal and help the student connect with the content on a deeper level.

Motion Infographics for Deeper Topics

The remote-meeting scenario isn’t the only media update in this course. HWM770 also features custom motion infographics that walk students through detailed topic overviews — giving complex material a visual, paced structure that’s easier to follow than a page of text alone.

⭐ Check out one of the motion graphic videos from the course.

What About Your Course?

If you have a long-standing topic or assignment in your course that still holds up conceptually but feels dated in how it’s presented to students, HWM770 is a good model for how to transform your course with new media. If you are revising a course, talk with your instructional designer and media specialist about ways to keep the theory but update the delivery, and maybe test out some new media tools!