Dan Grossman, an assistant professor in marketing at UMSL, has consistently received rave reviews from students and colleagues for his approach to teaching online classes. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)

Officially, Dan Grossman studies consumer behavior.

An assistant professor in marketing beginning his fourth year at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Grossman has long been fascinated by people’s decision-making processes, the psychology of how they’re influenced by certain products and what drives their purchasing decisions.

But the essence of his research? It’s about people.

“People are so interesting,” he said. “That’s why I love teaching the classes I teach. Because, really, when you’re studying consumer behavior and consumer psychology, you’re studying people. We’re self-important. We think we’re interesting, naturally. I love it. People are just fun.”

And it’s that fascination with understanding motivations and tendencies that has helped him thrive as an assistant professor in the College of Business Administration. Grossman, who earned his B.S. in marketing at the State University of New York at Oswego, finished his PhD in marketing at the University of Cincinnati in the spring of 2020 and started at UMSL directly after earning his degree. Arriving in St. Louis, he expected to teach classes in person, but obviously the COVID-19 pandemic changed those plans.

Like all faculty members at UMSL, he had to learn to prepare for online classes on the fly, and he enthusiastically credits the support team at UMSL’s Center for Teaching and Learning with preparing him to make that adjustment. He drew on other experiences, too, including the time he spent as a Twitch streamer on Fortnight.

No, really.

“I watched a lot of video blogs and Twitch streamers, thought about when I Twitch streamed a little bit,” Grossman said. “I wanted to pick up on the cadences and the familiar trim-edits that college-age students are typically watching, and I tried to implement those.”

With that research informing his class prep, Grossman essentially brought his lectures to the students, instead of the other way around. His online classes are asynchronous, meaning he’ll post them at specific times each week and students can watch when their schedule allows. For many, that’s immediately after they’re posted, but for others it could be later that week.

His classes are on a platform called VoiceThread, which allows students to comment on subjects and elements of the lectures they find interesting. And that allows Grossman to follow up with links or things he finds interesting to encourage discussion.

“The key to keeping engagement up is being super-engaged yourself,” he said. “Could I respond to this VoiceThread once a week and possibly still get the same teaching evaluations? Sure. But if you do it every day, a couple times a day, students feel like you’re into it and they’re actually talking to a professor in a classroom. That’s been my goal from the get-go. I had to take a class that was meant for in-person and switch the timeline quickly, so I try to keep it as close to feeling like an in-person class as I can without it being in-person.”

And keeping up with the class engagement helps him keep tabs on his students, which can be a challenge in an online setting. Grossman is acutely aware of the often-impersonal nature of online interactions – the lack of non-verbal clues such as facial expressions and body language to accompany words – so he’s always conscious of amplifying the empathy he feels in the messages he sends, compensating for the limitations of an online classroom.

“If I notice somebody hasn’t commented in two weeks, I’ll reach out,” he said. “Oftentimes something personal has happened and they just slow it down and that’s fine, but sometimes it’s just that they forgot to participate. That’s another key: reaching out. It’s so easy for people to slip through the cracks when you don’t see them sitting there with their head on the desk. It’s just about checking in.”

Grossman’s efforts have been noticed – by students, by his UMSL Business colleagues and even by the UMSL administration. In addition to previously winning the Marketing & Entrepreneurship Research Impact Award, the Douglas E. Durand Award for Research Excellence and the Anheuser-Busch Excellence in Teaching Award at UMSL, he was given the Chancellor’s Award for Sustained Excellence in Online Teaching by UMSL Chancellor Kristin Sobolik at the annual State of the University Address on Aug. 23.

“It was a great feeling to have my passion for online teaching recognized by the university,” Grossman said. “It really serves as a motivator to continue to work on improving my online classes to best serve our students.”

Gerald Gao, a professor of marketing and associate dean of research and faculty affairs, has said the way Grossman uses his own research to inform lectures and discussion is key, too. That’s something Gao has tried to demonstrate to other faculty members.

“Gerald set up a Teaching Effectiveness Panel, which was me and a few other people who had recently won a different teaching award,” Grossman said. “He had us all get together and then other professors that were interested would come in, and we’d show them some things we do. Gerald facilitated discussions and questions were asked, and that was really cool because otherwise, it’s tough. You have all these things you’re willing to share, but you never want to be like, ‘This is what I do, and you should do it this way, too!’ Because, really, there’s a million ways to teach a class, same as anything: create an art piece, win an NBA game, whatever.”

Grossman’s research, unsurprisingly, relates to people and psychology. He’s studying consumers’ sentimentally valuable possessions, when people imbue meaning into certain things.

“Older people have all these very special possessions that are super important to them, and eventually they have to downsize and get rid of all these possessions,” Grossman said. “And these possessions are, oftentimes, physical representations of themselves. They’re a part of their own identity. But the people they give it to are just like, ‘What am I supposed to do with this table? I have a house full of tables.’ My goal would be to figure out a way for these elderly people to best be able to pass on the sentimentality to that next generation in a way that lives on, so they’re happy and the next generation is happy that they have it.”

Ideally, that would involve creating some sort of roadmap, helping to guide multiple generations on how to transfer sentimentally significant possessions.

“It seems like everybody does it quite poorly, and both parties are quite unhappy,” he said. “‘I don’t want more junk in my house,’ contrasted with, ‘It doesn’t feel like anybody wants my special possessions. I don’t want them to go to waste.’ I’d love to help bridge that gap long-term in terms of research.”

To that end, Grossman is presenting his paper, “Sentimental Value: When Less is More,” at the annual Association for Consumer Research conference in Paris, France, on Sept. 29. His co-author on that paper is Julian Givi of West Virginia University.

“I’m very grateful to represent UMSL CoBA at my field’s top conference,” Grossman said. “I’m excited for two main reasons: First, the feedback I receive here is always incredibly valuable and helps advance my project. Second, the conference is a fantastic opportunity to connect with potential collaborators, which often leads to new projects and allows me to work with some of the best minds in the field.”