University at Buffalo School of Management

6 Buffalo Business | By Kevin Manne For Kim Hutter, the flexibility of the School of Management's online MBA program allows her to pursue a graduate degree while working full time as the coordinator of budgets and finance at Erie 1 BOCES in West Seneca. It's also a stepping stone to gain further certifications and advance her career. "I had never taken online courses, but during my undergrad- uate studies I always did my best in summer classes because they were short and focused, and this program has a similar structure," says Hutter. "I also like that the classes are asyn- chronous, so the program fits my schedule." Launched in fall 2023, the Online MBA program offers an innovative course structure, and professors are continuously building new ways for students to connect. This spring, Online MBA stu- dents in MGO 634, the program's project management course, enga- ged in a whole new way — using the sandbox video game Minecra. Minecra offers several ways to play, including a survival mode where players acquire resources to build their world and maintain health, and an adventure mode where players explore challenges created by others. But it was the game's creative mode that caught the eye of Natalie Simpson, professor of operations management and strategy, and asso- ciate dean for graduate programs, who teaches the project management course. "In this class you learn a portfo- lio of techniques to make a project successful, and we needed to give online students a way to take the concepts they're learning and use them to work together to solve a shared problem," says Simpson. "Minecra's creative mode gives us a shared digital space where students can come together in real time and take a problem from concept to conclusion. We're not just in there playing a game." Hutter says she was a little apprehensive about using Minecra at first, since she'd never played it. But her 20-year-old son helped her understand the basics. "We talked through how to navigate, and the way the class was structured made it very easy," she says. "We also had a 'team doctor' with dedicated office hours who was there to help if you were having any issues." For the class, each team had an assigned work area on a private Minecra server, and the work- space was set up with familiar road names from UB's North and South campuses, such as Mary Talbert Way, Audubon Parkway and Hayes Road. Teams were tasked with the Underground Ballroom Challenge, where they would work together to build a copy of a structure in their space through five assignments: developing a communication plan, conducting a project pre-mortem, creating prototypes, designing a work breakdown structure and ulti- mately building the replica ballroom. MINECRAFTING A PLAN Online MBA students learn project management skills in a unique virtual space The MGO 634 class after- party featured a fireworks show in the Minecraft world students built together throughout the semester. Hutter Simpson Regis

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