Penn State Smeal virtual teaching studios attract new audiences

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. –– The Penn State Smeal College of Business’ virtual teaching studios are attracting graduate students from around the world and providing them with a highly engaging, team-based learning environment.

Featuring state-of-the-art technologies including wall-size tablets, digital whiteboards, multiple cameras, and features such as real-time polling and breakout rooms, the virtual teaching studios have been used for the last two years to teach the college’s hybrid Executive DBA program, and beginning this fall will teach the first cohort of the college’s new Hybrid MBA program. Both programs hold a short, fully residential portion of the program at University Park to kick off the semester, and the remainder of the courses are conducted through live sessions utilizing the virtual classrooms on nights and weekends.

“It really brings together the best of a face-to-face, resident experience with the flexibility that you typically associate with a fully asynchronous online program,” said Brian Cameron, associate dean for professional graduate programs and executive education. “But there’s nothing asynchronous about these hybrid programs.”

Online-only MBA programs may take up to five or six years to complete and are not typically structured around highly engaged student cohorts. The hybrid Executive DBA and MBA programs both utilize a cohort model and are completed in three and two years, respectively.

“This type of delivery allows us to serve new markets, new audiences in a high-quality, high-touch manner. It attracts students who want to be part of a cohort and have the flexibility our programs provide. We can serve a segment of the market that we previously couldn't serve,” said Corey Phelps, John and Karen Arnold Dean of the Smeal College of Business.

“Demands for the delivery of graduate education are evolving and our Office of Professional Graduate Programs and Executive Education has been on the leading edge of the innovation that allows Smeal to be a leader in this market," Phelps added. "These efforts align with our long-term goals of evolving our curriculum and delivery methods to meet market demand.”

Penn State Smeal implemented the studios after taking virtual tours of similar studios at Harvard University, the Wharton School of Business and the University of California, Berkeley, and is the first Big Ten school to use this technology. The college will open two additional studios at University Park within the next year and has plans to use the technology for an upcoming master’s in applied artificial intelligence for business transformation program.

Smeal instructors have said they believe the studios are opening their graduate programs to new segments of working professionals, Cameron said, attracting prospective students that want to be part of a cohort and receive the benefits of live instruction but don't have the time or the ability to regularly travel to University Park.

“We keep in touch with our markets,” Cameron said. “And through many market studies and industry reports on the growth of hybrid graduate education, we saw that there was a growing opportunity for this type of program delivery, especially after the pandemic, as more and more people didn't want to travel as much but still wanted a highly engaging educational experience. They wanted something flexible, but they didn't want the not-as-engaging environment that you typically associate with a fully asynchronous online program. They wanted something in between traditional residential programs and fully online asynchronous programs.”

Hui Zhao, professor of supply chain management, has taught business analytics courses in both of he last two springs for the hybrid Executive DBA program and will begin teaching in the fifth module of the Hybrid MBA program in Fall 2026. She said she believes the in-person residency component of the programs is crucial to their success.

“You really get to know them [the students] personally,” Zhao said. “You can connect their face with their bio. I get to know their personality, their strengths. It really sets up the whole semester.”

Zhao met with instructional designers from Smeal for an initial tour of the virtual teaching studios prior to teaching her first class, then went back for a second trip that more specifically addressed the needs for her classes. For example, she uses a slide deck and a digital whiteboard at the same time and likes for her students to be able to see her face while she's teaching. The multiple cameras in the studio can capture her face at different angles so she isn't constantly turning around.

Zhao also takes regular advantage of the live polling feature, which allows her to receive immediate feedback from students during the sessions. Having staff in the studio with her for each class to provide technical support helped her work out early bugs.

“They’re there in real time, helping me, so I don’t have to worry about these things,” she said.

Zhao added that the DBA program’s regular faculty meetings, in which they discuss various things related to the program including which aspects of the technology and the programs have worked best for them and which have needed tweaks, have been helpful for her as well.

Lariza Stewart, an Executive DBA program student in the 2027 cohort, works a full-time job as director of business development at ENSCO Rail and raises a family from her home in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. She said the flexibility the hybrid program provided was “the only reason I went back to school.” Her home setup includes four computer screens, which allows her to take advantage of the studio’s video technology and get a better feel for what her peers are thinking during class.

“English is not my first language, so seeing the expressions of the professors and my classmates while they’re talking makes a huge difference,” Stewart said.

Teague Willits-Kelley, an Executive DBA program student in the 2027 cohort, said he chose the program in part because of how interactive it would be, even with classmates logging on from various parts of the United States as well as countries including the Dominican Republic, Myanmar and Qatar.

“You see that the professors are able to take their curriculum, put it into this interactive, virtual world, and still have the ability to have those conversations with the class like you would in a classroom versus lecturing to a computer screen,” he said.

Willits-Kelley also likes the team breakout sessions that are part of the course technology, which also provides instructors the option of listening in or checking in on those groups, as Margaret Luciano, an associate professor of management and organization, often does in her class.

“Their ability to step in and make a comment on a thought we’re having and maybe take it to the next step to come to a better result is there,” Willits-Kelley said, “and it happens every time we meet.”

Willits-Kelley, the senior project manager for Mount Nittany Health systems, said he has been able to take what he's learned in the program and directly apply it to his current job.

“This program is helping me personally not only to understand how to do research, how to go pull data, but why,” he said. “And then what is that result and how is that result going to better other people, better the future, the community?”

Cameron said other universities are beginning to explore copying Smeal’s hybrid instructional model and technology.

“We’re already seeing other Executive DBA programs begin to copy our hybrid delivery model and expect the same will happen over time with our hybrid MBA program,” he said.