All course stories

Dr. Bradley Wesner

MGMT 309 · Mays Business School, Texas A&M

How MGMT 309 made learning visible in a 2,500+ student online course

2,500

students

92%

completion rates

Full course

simulation adoption

5–15

assignments expanded

Continued

after instructor transition

Background

Management, taught online at scale

Dr. Bradley Wesner taught MGMT 309, Survey of Management, in large online sections at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School.

The course served approximately 2,500+ students with 1000+ students in fall and spring terms, and summer sections reaching around 500 students. In a course that large and online, the challenge was not simply delivering content. It was knowing whether students were actually learning and applying management concepts.

MGMT 309 first used Cartedo for 5 assignments. In later semesters, Cartedo became a larger part of the course model, replacing traditional assignments and exams with simulations that gave students applied practice and personalized feedback at scale.

The challenge

Online completion did not always show real understanding.

In a large online course, students can watch lectures, complete quizzes, and submit assignments while still leaving the professor unsure about what they can actually do.

Management is especially hard to assess through passive assignments. Students need to make decisions, respond to workplace situations, and explain how they would lead, prioritize, and manage tradeoffs.

Before Cartedo

Traditional management assignment

Students submitted written responses and quizzes about leadership, conflict, change, and management decisions.

Hard to see

Were students applying management concepts or memorizing terms?

Could they make decisions in realistic workplace situations?

Could they explain why they chose a specific action?

Were they learning across assignments or just completing them?

The shift

Management lessons became workplace decisions.

Cartedo helped MGMT 309 turn traditional assignments into management simulations. Students worked through realistic scenarios where they had to lead teams, respond to conflict, handle change, make decisions, and explain their reasoning.

The course began with 5 Cartedo assignments. As the model proved useful, the course moved further toward simulation-based assessment.

Students were not just learning management vocabulary.

They were practicing management judgment.

The management decision loop

Read the situation

Students face a realistic workplace scenario.

Decide

They make a leadership or management call.

Explain reasoning

They justify why they chose that action.

Get feedback

Cartedo gives targeted, rubric-aligned feedback.

Improve

They build stronger judgment across scenarios.

Simulation examples

From management lessons to workplace decisions

Strategic Planning and Decision-Making

Students set priorities and defend a strategic direction under incomplete information.

Managing Work Groups and Teams

Students coordinate a team through conflict, shifting roles, and competing workloads.

Leadership and Influence Processes

Students practice influencing stakeholders and leading without direct authority.

Employee Motivation and Performance Management

Students diagnose motivation gaps and design a fair performance response.

Organizational Change and Innovation

Students plan how to communicate change and respond to employee resistance.

Operations and Quality Management

Students weigh operational trade-offs while protecting quality and delivery.

The outcome

Personalized feedback became possible in a large online course.

Cartedo gave students feedback specific to their decisions and reasoning, while helping the professor review grading rationale and cohort patterns. The course could assess application, not just completion.

Even after Dr. Wesner transitioned from Texas A&M, MGMT 309 continued using Cartedo under successor instructors — a strong signal that the model was useful beyond one instructor’s experiment.

The course moved from online completion to visible learning.

Student responses

Anonymized student reflection themes.

“Not gonna lie, the first simulation I was a little lost on what was happening. But the feedback report spelled out exactly what I needed to fix, and from the third simulation on my scores just kept climbing. It got genuinely fun after that.”

MGMT 309 Reflections

“I was unsure at first, but the manager feedback actually helped. I took the notes, applied them the next round, and my scores went up.”

MGMT 309 Reflections

“I did this in the fall after interning over the summer, and honestly the internship had nothing on how real this felt.”

MGMT 309 Reflections

“It stopped feeling like homework and started feeling like I was actually being put in charge of a situation. That made the concepts finally click.”

MGMT 309 Reflections

The takeaway

The course moved from online completion to visible learning.

MGMT 309 needed more than scalable content delivery. It needed a way to see whether students could apply management concepts in realistic situations.

Cartedo helped turn online assignments into management practice, giving students feedback and giving the course better visibility into applied learning at scale.

Disclaimer: Independent course-use example

This Cartedo-authored story is a factual example of course use—not a testimonial or endorsement. The featured instructor and institution did not write, review, approve, or sponsor it, and no affiliation or recommendation should be inferred.

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