This paper examines the relationship of student engagement to the use of on line class discussion sessions activities when these are added into traditional face to face on campus Principles of Marketing and Principles of Management classes. Integrating a regular series of on line class activities and discussion sessions into a traditional face to face course may be a risky innovation but one which yields impressive positive results. I have taught on line courses for more than ten years, and while I had been seriously planning to create a blended class for several semesters, I realized that I had to finally take the final step and "just Do it" as I might never feel ready enough to proceed. As I expected, I learned a lot. In the new blended class, student attendance and interest in the class material increased! Students appeared better prepared for classes and seemed to enjoy attending class and especially participating in the on line class sessions. Grades on exams improved from previous semesters when on line class sessions were not used. I have been teaching Principles of Marketing for more than 15 years, and have been teaching classes exclusively on line for more than 10 years. I am a proponent of the value of both on line and face to face teaching. My regular class size for a face to face class is 40 or more students. One of her primary goals for the new blended classes is to engage students more in class material using technology so they can achieve the learning objectives for the courses. Creating blended classes using technology and greater interaction with students is made more of a challenge due to the size of her face to face classes. For several years, I have experimented with my face to face classes by adding a session or two of what I labeled "Sample On Line Class Sessions," to the regular face to face classes I taught. Student feedback to these " sample chats" was overwhelmingly positive. In fact, students always asked the same questions: " Can we do all our remaining classes this way?" I found that students who I introduced to on line classes in this way usually went on to enroll in classes that were exclusively on line.
