To support critical thinking, we created an on-line interview relevance to the course material first. Students read about the person and were then asked to formulate a question for this person. In addition to the interview question, the students had to submit justification for their question and how it related to the course material. Ask the Expert. 18 industry experts from different areas of expertise in the telecommunications industry participated in a 5 week on-line case assignment.
Students read each expert's page.
Some expert's provided pictures and some did not. After reading about the experts, students then asked the experts questions at key decision points in the case assignment. Faculty monitored the questions to make sure that the same question was not submitted twice to each expert since they were giving their time freely. Also, if two or three questions were similar, the faculty merged the questions into one. The guest facilitator is well-known in the field and students were already going to be reading an article he wrote as part of their class work.