Manager of User Experience Connects Virtually with Students
12/12/2015
David Feldman, manager of user experience for Google’s Gmail platform, paid a virtual “visit” to Asst. Prof. Elana Feldman’s two sections of Organizational Behavior on Oct. 18.
David Feldman, who also happens to be Elana Feldman’s brother, spoke about leadership, drawing not only on his experiences at Google, but also on his prior experiences as a manager at Yahoo!, AOL and his own startup (which was acquired by Google in 2014).
The conversation was enabled by two-way audio and video technology — available to all instructors in the Manning School of Business — to bridge the distance between the classroom in Lowell and Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. UMass Lowell’s BlackBoard system was also an integral part of the students’ learning. Using BlackBoard’s discussion board feature, students submitted potential questions for the guest speaker, reviewed each other’s questions, and voted for those they found most interesting. The students whose questions were selected were given the opportunity to ask their questions during the guest speaker’s virtual “visit.”