How Cal State East Bay Cultivates High-Quality Interactive Online Learning to Prepare Students for Client-Facing Careers

This bright spot is part of our “Promising Practices in Online Education” series highlighting ways California institutions and faculty harness online education for student success. California Competes continues to research and document these innovations in support of a more agile higher education system responsive to the needs of today’s students and economy.

The Challenge: Preparing Students for Client-Facing Careers via Online Education 

Colleges across California face growing demand for online courses.¹ At California State University, East Bay (CSUEB), nearly three quarters of students take at least one online course and over one quarter of undergraduates learn entirely online.² For client-focused fields like social work and psychology, this increase in online learning can present challenges where future practitioners need to develop critical in-person observational and intervention skills. How can students learn to recognize the subtle signs of trauma, practice de-escalation techniques, or learn to work with diverse client populations without face-to-face interaction?

Traditional online methods such as video recordings are limited because they rarely offer the dynamic variety of scenarios or the hands-on practice students need to build professional competence. Faculty face a critical question: How can online learning spaces be made sufficiently interactive and practical for career preparation in fields that rely on in-person observation and engagement?

The Innovation: Using Technology to Bridge the Gap Between Virtual and Real-World Practice

To create immersive online learning environments that prepare students for success in client-focused fields, CSUEB faculty leverage multiple innovative technologies, including:

• Video Assessment for Clinical Skills: Faculty use interactive video recording tools that allow students to upload practice sessions and receive detailed, time-stamped feedback on their clinical techniques. Unlike static video recordings, these platforms enable professors to comment on specific moments during demonstrations, helping students understand exactly when and how to improve their practice. At CSUEB, faculty use GoReact to make skill-building feedback more specific and actionable.
• Virtual Clinical Simulations: In social work courses, faculty select from virtual simulations that present patients reflecting diverse backgrounds and conditions, exposing students to a comprehensive range of potential clinical scenarios. Some social work courses at CSUEB use Genius Academy for these simulations.
• Interactive Content Delivery: Unlike training videos that simply check whether someone has watched or may embed quiz questions to proceed, faculty create active learning experiences by embedding polls and game-like challenges in the videos, enhancing student engagement, promoting peer connection, and supporting real-time assessment of comprehension. Specific platforms used at CSUEB include Kahoot and Edpuzzle.³

Additionally, these online learning technologies collectively prepare students for the growing reality of telehealth practice. By training students in virtual environments through video assessments, simulations, and interactive platforms, programs ensure graduates are comfortable and proficient in virtual clinical interactions—a skill increasingly required in modern healthcare environments. 

The Support: Institutional Infrastructure That Enables Faculty Innovation

But it’s not enough to simply provide faculty access to different tools; faculty must be equipped and guided to effectively use these tools to deliver high-quality online learning experiences for students. CSUEB does this by fostering a supportive campus culture and making strategic institutional investments in digital innovation. For example, the campus supports innovation through the following:

• Comprehensive Support Infrastructure: CSUEB’s Office of the Online Campus, led by Senior Director Dr. Roger Wen, provides a robust support system for faculty teaching online education and enables them to successfully integrate new technology and tools into their courses. The office—which includes e-learning specialists, learning management system administrators, and visual media content developers—offers hands-on curriculum development support, promotes best practices in quality assurance and universal design, and supports faculty ranging from those new to online teaching to those with decades of experience. 
• Positive Campus Culture: Via the university’s investment in staff, professional development, and software, CSUEB sought to create an environment where faculty feel encouraged to experiment with online tools, knowing they’ll receive support. The Office of the Online Campus maintains a “how can we help?” approach that lowers barriers to adoption while maintaining focus on student outcomes. As part of this supportive culture, the college implements Quality Matters (QM), a national standard for online course design. QM provides comprehensive faculty training and guidance, ensuring online courses meet high-quality design standards. Faculty who apply the QM model see higher student pass rates across all groups, with particularly strong gains for underrepresented students, including those from low-income backgrounds or who are the first in their family to go to college.⁴
• Institutional Investment in Innovation Tools: The Office of the Online Campus takes a measured approach to technology adoption, starting with small numbers of licenses to pilot new tools, collecting faculty feedback and assessing campus-wide interest before making larger investments. Through a dedicated allotment and strategic application of funding for new technologies and emerging educational tools, CSUEB shows an institutional commitment to investing in innovative solutions that encourages faculty experimentation with cutting-edge approaches to online education.

The Impact: Career-Ready Graduates Prepared for Modern Practice

CSUEB’s approach transforms how students develop the professional skills they’ll need for today’s client-facing careers. By exposing students to diverse clinical scenarios through virtual simulations and providing real-time feedback on their technique development, these innovations prepare graduates who are ready for the realities of contemporary healthcare environments—including the growing telehealth sector. These career-focused benefits are enhanced by the practical advantages of online learning: the approach reduces financial barriers (students calculated in-person attendance would cost an additional $800 per month in parking, child care, and lost wages), and the integration of interactive tools fosters meaningful connections between students and their peers as well as with instructors, that create the trust and community necessary for transformational learning.

“The workplace is changing rapidly. Psychotherapy was delivered almost entirely in-person just 5 years ago, but not anymore with the growth of telehealth. As a faculty member, it’s important for me to be open to what’s possible with online learning because it’s incumbent on faculty to prepare students for modern practice.”– Dr. Kristen Gustavson, Associate Professor, Social Work, Cal State East Bay

We would like to thank Dr. Kristen Gustavson, Associate Professor of Social Work, and Dr. Roger Wen, Senior Director of the Office of the Online Campus at CSUEB, for sharing insights on this innovative approach to online education.

Stay tuned for the next blog in our “Promising Practices in Online Education” series!