What Happens When The Real Learning Occurs Outside The Classroom?

Like many professors today, David Eyman was watching something shift in his students. The classroom still looked the same. The materials hadn’t changed. But the behavior had.

Eyman, who teaches entrepreneurship and innovation at Miami University’s Farmer School of Business, had spent years refining a 15-week design thinking course. It was polished. Structured. Proven.

And one day, it stopped working.

“I looked up, and instead of brainstorming ideas, the students were grabbing for their phones,” he says. “They weren’t looking inward for answers. They were looking out — to each other, to Google, to ChatGPT.”

FROM 15 WEEKS TO 3 HOURS — AND BETTER RESULTS

That moment sparked what Eyman and Dean Jenny Darroch call “flipped thinking” — a reorientation of how students engage with knowledge in an era where answers are instant, AI is omnipresent, and traditional learning structures feel increasingly out of sync with student behavior.

Now the Farmer School, a top-50 undergraduate business program, is making a bold bet: that education must evolve not only because of AI, but because of how students themselves are evolving.

One place they’ve been paying close attention? Business fraternities.

“Students will tell you that some of their most valuable learning happens outside the classroom,” Darroch says. “So why not go where they’re already engaged?”

Eyman took that challenge literally. He partnered with Phi Gamma Nu, a professional business fraternity, to run a high-stakes, real-world design sprint — but with some critical differences: no grades, no lecture, and no faculty leading the exercise.

Instead, he brought in a neutral facilitator from industry: Jennifer Loeb, long-time CEO of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Greater Cincinnati. The students were tasked with solving a real problem for the massive nonprofit, one of the largest organizations of its kind in the U.S.

They were given three hours.

The result? “It was more productive than 15 weeks of classroom work,” Eyman says. “They were sharper, more creative, and more committed. Because they weren’t just learning — they were trying to impress each other.”

Carson Porter, a rising junior from Hubbard, Ohio, majoring in Supply Chain and Operations Management with a minor in Business Analytics, was one of the student leaders who participated in the sprint. As a member of Phi Gamma Nu’s executive team, he’s deeply involved in shaping co-curricular experiences — and says this one stood out.

“Everyone in the room showed up ready to go — not because we had to, but because we wanted to,” Porter says. “There was something about working with a real client that made it feel serious. We weren’t just thinking about the grade — we were thinking about whether our ideas would actually work.”

WHEN GPA ISN’T THE GOAL, LEARNING COMES ALIVE

Darroch and Eyman are quick to note the larger challenge at play: grades may no longer be the best proxy for learning. Students are hyper-aware of GPA’s role in internships, job placement, scholarship eligibility, and eventual grad school viability — but that same pressure has made some learning feel transactional, not transformational.

“The GPA has become detached from actual learning,” Eyman says. “Students are so focused on outcomes, they’ve optimized the system. Some don’t even read the book before the quiz — they’ve figured out they can game it.”

In contrast, when grades are removed from the equation, engagement tends to rise — especially when the work is real, relevant, and reputational.

“They want high-stakes experiential learning,” Darroch says. “They want their reputation on the line. They want to present to a real client or compete in an investment banking pitch — not just write a paper for a grade.”

Porter agrees. “This felt more high-stakes than any class project I’ve done. The adrenaline was real. Everyone wanted to bring their best because it wasn’t just for a professor — it was for each other, and for the client.”

He says the structure of the session pushed students out of their comfort zones. 

“It wasn’t a professor walking us through it — it was a professional who treated us like peers. That changed the energy completely.”

FROM ‘LEARNING BY DOING’ TO ‘LEARNING BY THINKING’

One of the key shifts Eyman and Darroch have identified is what they call flipped thinking: a recognition that AI is now doing many of the routine “doing” tasks — writing plans, designing slides, generating outlines.

“Now the challenge is teaching students how to think,” Darroch says. “How to be critical and creative before, during, and after they use AI. That’s a different skillset.”

It’s also where they see an unexpected opening for the liberal arts — especially in a business education context.

“The liberal arts have taken some hits lately,” Darroch says. “But the ability to think deeply, to reason, to communicate — that’s now more important than ever. AI can generate a marketing plan. But can you tell if it’s any good?”

Porter says the sprint made that challenge feel real. 

“It’s easy to generate ideas with AI,” he says. “But we had to step back and ask, ‘Does this actually solve the problem?’ That’s the kind of thinking we don’t always get to practice in class.”

BUILDING A NEW LEARNING INFRASTRUCTURE

The fraternity sprint was just a test — but it opened up new avenues of possibility. Eyman and Darroch now hope to scale the concept to other student clubs, co-curricular spaces, and eventually bring it back into the classroom. That could mean an MBA or other master’s program classroom, as well.

“What we’re discovering is that learning doesn’t just happen in the curriculum,” Darroch says. “It happens across the entire student experience. And we should be designing for that.”

Eyman is already building modular workshops focused on high-level thinking skills — skills students can deploy with or without AI. It’s part of a larger strategic shift at Farmer that aims to better align how students actually learn with how professors teach.

“One student told me: ‘Why are we learning this in three lectures when I could just watch a five-minute YouTube video?’” Eyman recalls. “They weren’t being disrespectful — they were being honest.”

EDUCATION AS IDENTITY, NOT JUST INFORMATION

For Eyman and Darroch, the goal isn’t to eliminate grades or upend the academic structure. It’s to make business education more meaningful — more connected to how students live, learn, and become.

“It’s not about what they learn,” Eyman says. “It’s about who they become.”

And sometimes, that means giving students exactly what they want: less lecture, more context, real stakes — and space to think.

As Carson Porter puts it: “This wasn’t about getting a better GPA. It was about getting better at solving problems. And I’ll remember that experience way more than most things I’ve done for a grade.”

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