Retreating to their adjacent offices, professors Edwin Lindsay and Michelle Harrolle found themselves in a similar frustration. The students in their classes both suffered from tunnel vision, eyeing the “sexy jobs” in sport management, such as head coach. If that’s not bad enough, the careers are competitive and the spaces are few.

Top-tier sports jobs may be glamorous, but they obscure a window of opportunities available in the industry. Harrolle, former professor in sport management, requested a grant from DELTAto address this problem. With the gamified Introduction to Sport Management course, students unveil career paths that they may not have considered otherwise.

“I wanted to create an interactive and fun game for students in sport management, both online and on campus, to help them learn about all of the possible job positions available,” Harrolle said. “Our goal was to have them engage with the online game, have fun and learn during the process.”

The Moodle plug-in, which took two years to materialize, can be taken either online or in-person. The course presents a varying game each semester.

 “We went out and talked to people in the industry, asking what were the top 10 skills for each job,” Lindsay said. “We collapsed the 10 skills down to five so they can fit within the 16-week course.”

Upon completing the Myers-Briggs personality test, students are assigned a personalized avatar for the course. Subsequently, they pick an entry-level job, for which they complete activities to win the game. The game ultimately revolves around building the skills necessary to secure the position of their dream job.

The job of athletic director, for instance, requires budgeting, supervision, leadership, fundraising and evaluation skills. Students have plenty of opportunities to earn points, with 75 possible activities. If students garner enough points, they can land the job. Once they are eligible, they send in a resume and cover letter, which Lindsay critiques.

“It was really a team effort; there were a lot of people involved,” Lindsay said. “I reached out to a lot of colleagues and universities. Even the people at DELTA were researching things to do for the project.”

Stephen Bader, a business and technology application developer, and Amanda Robertson, a former DELTA employee, brought the module to life.

“We had a great time developing this course and developing the online platform game for students,” Harrolle said. “The DELTA team at NCSU was amazing, forward-thinking and extremely innovative. We couldn’t have completed the platform and online game without the expertise at DELTA.”

Though Lindsay was intimidated by the technology at first, he is now DELTA’s Faculty Fellow, mentoring others who are using the tool.

“I had to go through the project like an IT guy,” Lindsay said. “Bader told me, ‘You cannot break it. If something goes terribly wrong, I’ll reboot it as though it was yesterday.’ After that, I got more confidence and learned to manage it on my own.”

Navigating through the course in its entirety, or “the scroll of death,” (a term coined by Lindsay), he says the course activity has significantly increased with the novel platform. However, the classic components of the introductory course still stand, which is the completion of five activities. If students don’t win the game, it won’t take a hit to their final grades.

Yet with the gamified platform, students are going above and beyond the requirements to grasp the material. Students eagerly complete the assignments, and Lindsay has seen an increase in exam scores across the board. Particularly, women have outperformed the males in the course, notably in forum posts. According to Lindsay, oftentimes men will come in with the preconceived notion that they know the material, while women do more research.

“The incentive for them before was slim to none,” Lindsay said. “Students are taking risks than what they wouldn’t ordinarily take. My students are experiencing more of what it’s like to be in the professional industry than ever before in my course.”

Lindsay, who once taught content in a regimented format, now places an emphasis on real-life applications. The course is prominently individualized; students are divided in accordance to their interests. Lindsay purposes the course as a networking bridge for students, connecting them with former TAs, graduate students and professionals in the industry.

“I’ve become much more of an HR counselor in this course than I do in terms of teaching,” Lindsay said. “I’ve done a lot more than I thought was possible.”

Though Introduction to Sport Management is the sole course fully gamified, engineering, chemistry and botany courses have embraced the Moodle plug-in as a supplement.

“It would be great if courses both online and on-campus were more individualized,” Harrolle said. “The largest challenges are the amount of time, funding and available technology to make this happen.”

The tool has the potential to be utilized throughout a student’s curriculum. For students on the fence, exploratory studies or the Career Center could use the tool to expose differing paths in a nonthreatening way. 

“When you can cater or adapt content to a specific person, the more likely the student will engage with the content, and ultimately the more they will learn,” Harrolle said.

The module allows Lindsay to fuse his expertise in teaching and advising.

“I’d rather have students figure out what they want to do sooner than later,” Lindsay said. “We want them to sift through our programs and make their decisions effectively and efficiently, then provide them with additional resources for exploration and a professional in the field that they can reach out to and answer questions that we haven’t been able to answer.”

Lindsay, an NC State alumnus, realized he was unsatisfied with biology his junior year. While taking an elective course in parks, recreation and tourism management, his professor encouraged him to pursue graduate school in something he enjoyed.

“Is this really something my students are ever going to use?” Lindsay said. “That’s my yardstick now. If we don’t know how they’re going to use it in their profession, then why are we teaching it? The way that I teach this class is unlike any class you’ve had. You have to have an open mind and a willingness to try something different. I flipped what I knew about teaching on its head.”