Ranya Yousif
Marketing educators strive to achieve a balance between research-led education and industry-led education and aligning marketing curriculum with the standards and expectations set by employers. I am the module leader of the Advertising and Media Campaign course taught to senior students in major marketing. The module aims to demonstrate and familiarize the students with the steps of an advertising campaign, to provide the students with employable practical skills that can be very useful in their future careers. This case study is a reflection of the teaching and assessment strategies implemented in the module to facilitate students’ active participation in constructing their knowledge highlighting the use of experiential and authentic learning through activities stimulating practical contexts to facilitate students’ exposure to learning experiences that develop their critical thinking and other important skills needed in the marketing profession. The case demonstrates how the course curriculum is developed to achieve its learning outcomes and cope with the professional market requirements and students’ expectations.
Rationale and Theoretical Foundation
The continuously changing landscape of business and marketing education that focuses on students as customers and the involvement of various stakeholders in higher education, all create a challenge for marketing educators to design innovative, impactful and contemporary course curriculum to link theory with practice and enable students to gain the knowledge and skills required to work in the marketing profession. In responses to that, various scholars proposed the use of experiential learning activities to build students’ active involvement with course related experiences that facilitate the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills as important graduates’ attributes. (Brennan, 2014 and Brennan & Heidt, 2018)
In the same vein Ma Lee (2012) highlighted the importance of authentic learning by using activities situating real practices to raise students’ engagement to produce (not just reproduce) knowledge by drawing upon students’ talents and enthusiasm to work on real tasks to apply the course related knowledge. According to Canhoto & Murphy (2016) experiential learning activities have various benefits like making students actively participate in knowledge construction, improve knowledge acquisition, help students in gaining employability skills and preparing them for their professional careers. Moreover Spanjaard, Hall & Stegemann (2018) stressed on the increasing demand of business employers for graduates who are “work ready” adding that the use of experiential learning can equip the students with ‘work readiness’ skills and ‘career readiness’ insights.
Putting theory into practice, advertising is a challenging module due to the dynamics of the field and the changing landscape of the advertising media. The students come to the course with high expectations to learn, apply, build skills and express themselves, moreover the marketing employers in Egypt have a wide pool of potential employees which make them picky and want a ready graduate equipped with experience and employability skills, which raise the challenge. The Understanding by Design (UbD) framework explained by McTighe and Wiggins (2012) is the most suited framework for my practice as designing an effective curriculum using UbD is depending on taking a backward approach that includes three stages.
The first stage is determining the desired results of the curriculum, the second stage is the evidence or assessment design that effectively measure the achievement of the results determined in stage one, and the last stage is plan learning by designing lessons and activities to ensure the development of students authentic performance and autonomous learning.
Reflection on Teaching and Assessment practices
As advertising practitioners put more emphasis on online and digital advertising techniques, I integrated new content related to online advertising in the course material in addition to designing workshops delivered by practitioners in the digital marketing field to link the knowledge to practice. Moreover, the lectures are a mixture of delivering course knowledge and demonstrations of real campaigns and cases for discussions to build problem solving and critical thinking skills.
The course assessments include group project designed based on the employability skills that should be gained from the course such as problem solving, critical reflection, creativity, communication skills, group thinking and self-confidence, accordingly, the project is designed to simulate real practices in advertising agencies. The students design an advertising campaign for a real product (industry based or social marketing) of their choice and apply the course concepts including research, creative strategy formulation, media planning, creative work execution and measurements of campaign success. They are provided with guidance and feedback at each step, and are given the freedom to think, apply, and create genuine ideas for their campaign. They work in-groups to build a real experience of the workplace such as the creative team in an advertising agency. And the following are examples of the campaigns designed by the students:
Example 1: Awareness campaign for Tunis Village, a resort located in the oasis of Fayoum, Egypt
Figure 1: Billboard Ad
Example 2: Awareness campaign for Reform Studio a company uses sustainable materials for everyday products like clothing, furniture, and home decor
Figure 1: Outdoor Ads
To complete the experience, I design an advertising projects’ event each semester where students present their campaigns and these are evaluated by a panel of experts in the advertising field (creative directors – advertising and media consultants – founders of advertising agencies). Moreover students invite executives from the companies they designed campaigns for in order to get more practical insights from them and market their work. The event is designed in a form of competition among the students’ groups where the panel members comment on each campaign and select the best campaigns based on the creativity of the ideas, the cohesiveness among campaign elements and students presentation skills. The students are always excited to participate and learn from the event and they usually get opportunities for internships and job offers from panel members.
After teaching advertising for many years, I realized that the more students are involved in practical activities and have the freedom to create ideas and getting constructive feedback, the higher the students’ performance, and the better the learning gain. I always feel proud seeing my students working in reputable advertising agencies after graduation and becoming the future experts in the field of advertising and giving me feedback on the similarities between the course and the real world.
References
Brennan, L., Lu, V. and Von der Heidt, T., 2018. Transforming marketing education: Historical, contemporary and future perspectives. Australasian Marketing Journal, 26(2), pp.65-69.
Brennan, R., 2014. Reflecting on experiential learning in marketing education. The Marketing Review, 14(1), pp.97-108.
Canhoto, A.I. and Murphy, J., 2016. Learning from simulation design to develop better experiential learning initiatives: An integrative approach. Journal of Marketing Education, 38(2), pp.98-106.
Ma, Y.J. and Lee, H.H., 2012. Incorporating an authentic learning strategy into undergraduate apparel and merchandising curriculum. Journal of Experiential Education, 35(1), pp.272-289.
McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. (2012). Understanding by design framework. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Spanjaard, D., Hall, T. and Stegemann, N., 2018. Experiential learning: Helping students to become ‘career-ready’. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 26(2), pp.163-171.
Dr Ranya Yousif (ryousif@msa.edu.eg) is a Lecturer and Researcher in Marketing at Faculty of Management Sciences, October University for Modern Sciences and Arts (MSA). She has a BA in Mass Communication (Field of Specialism: Journalism) from Cairo University and an MBA in Business Administration (Field of Specialism: Marketing) from Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport (AASTMT) and Masters in Business Administration (Field of Specialism: Marketing) from Helwan University. She obtained her PhD in Business Administration (Field of Specialism: Marketing) from Cairo University. Her research relates predominantly to the field of Marketing with a special focus on Advertising, Integrated Marketing Communications, and Consumer Behaviour. She is currently enrolled in the PGCert in Higher Education Programme at the University of Greenwich.