Shake up your Inspiration…

One of my Advertising-Marketing Communications students, Katy Treble, explained in her Campaign Research Brief for Advertising Strategy 2011 (quoting Cowling, 2010): ‘Australia has one of the highest uptakes of social media in the world.’ She advised: out of Australia’s ‘population of 21 million, 14 million Australians are Internet users…The huge amount of Internet users in Australia resulted in $2.3 billion in online advertisements sales in 2010’.

For Advertising-Marketing Communications students social networking needs to be part of their routine, even though there is nothing routine about it. They not only engage with sites, but due to the volume of online advertising they have the opportunity to evaluate and critically analyse the effectiveness of campaigns, greatly assisting them in their critical thinking, conceptual skills, and creativity.

As discussed in the post ‘It’s all about you…YouTube’, social networking platforms enable the industry to share and showcase their creativity, as well explain the effectiveness of a creative campaign through an online case study. As highlighted in the post ‘You want evidence…you get research’, proving the success of a campaign either through sales or behavioural change is what all campaigns are trying to achieve.

One way to consider it is: ‘to expose students to expert performance is to give them a model of how a real practitioner behaves in a real situation’ (Herrington and Herrington, 2006. p5).

Treble (2011) explains that YouTube has been the global leader in delivering online videos to a mass audience. Its success it has also assisted in encouraging other sites to develop, such as Vimeo www.vimeo.com , a New York based social networking site that allows open membership so as to share creativity (videos). In an effort to enhance the users creativity, the site features tools to assist users in producing their videos (source: Vimeo, 2011).

Another site that is more focused on the sharing of creative ideas is the Australian-developed The Inspiration Room, http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/ (source: The Inspiration Room, 2011).

What both have in common with other similar global social networking sites, is that the industry uses these sites as a vehicle to showcase their work and promote their achievements. In a teaching and learning context it means they provide easy access for students to source some of the leading and innovative creative campaigns. As mentioned previously, this supports students as they have the opportunity to source campaigns that might appeal or be in a style that reflects their own work. It also enables them to analyse the success or lack of and how this could impact on their own work.

In my classes I actively encourage the sharing of ideas and I promote this through the online learning platform Moodle. I establish discussion posts where students are encouraged to source campaigns and analyse their effectiveness against theoretical concepts. In addition to YouTube, students tend to seek out case studies from Vimeo and The Inspiration Room. Two examples that were sourced by students were the Litago Cow Shake http://vimeo.com/19249751 and the 2010 Ad of the Year (2010 Cannes Lion and Primetime Emmy), the Old Spice ‘The man your man could smell like’ http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2010/old-spice-manmercials-man/ The students who analysed and shared these campaigns through online Moodle forums were able to explain strategic industry approaches that were used in both campaigns.

As Herrington and Herrington (2006) describe: ‘In many university courses, students are given no examples of experts performing (a) task, or of expert comment, to enable them to model real-world practice.’ (p5). By encouraging students to use digital platforms, especially social networking sites, as they might use an academic text book provides them with first-hand experience of industry’s innovation and creativity.

References:
Annous, N. sourced: Proctor and Gamble’s Old Spice ‘Smell Like a Man’ from The Inspiration Room:
http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2010/old-spice-manmercials-man/ and http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2010/smell-like-a-monster-on-sesame-street/ as referenced on post: ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’. University of Canberra Learn Online Moodle, Client Relationship Management 8137, Tuesday, 12 October 2010, 04:41 PM.

Bakk-Rostad, L. sourced: Litago Cow Shake online case study from Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/19249751 as referenced on post: ‘Guys, you really need to see this’. University of Canberra Learn Online Moodle, Advertising Strategy G 7732, Thursday, 17 February 2011, 01:33 PM.

Herrington, A. and Herrington, J. (2006) What is an Authentic Learning Environment? Idea Group Inc.

Old Spice (Proctor and Gamble) 2010 creative campaign ‘The man your man could smell like’ produced by Wieden+Kennedy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE Winner 2010 Grand Prix Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival http://www.canneslions.com/ and 2010 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial http://www.emmys.tv/
Further reference Wikipedia ‘The Man your Man Could Smell like’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Your_Man_Could_Smell_Like accessed 7 May 2011.

The Inspiration Room, http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/ accessed 7 May 2011.

Treble, K. (2011) Campaign Research Brief for Heineken. Produced for University of Canberra Advertising Strategy G 7732, Semester 1 2011. Referencing: Cowling, D. (June 2010). Social Media News, ‘Social Media stats in Australia – Facebook, Blogger, Myspace’, retrieved from: http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-stats-in-australia-facebook-blogger-myspace/

Vimeo, www.vimeo.com accessed 7 May 2011.

I have set up a very simple blog using Google www.blogger.com I deliberately chose the bookish template as I liked the juxtaposition of the traditional bookshelf / library look with the blog's title of Sally's Education Technology.

I have also activated the settings so it is private and not for public access. I couldn't find where I could change the settings so it is displayed in chronological order...but I'm unsure that this is important for me to view the original post first. I'm so used to email where the most recent hits the top of the screen and when the messages fall off the screen - well, they do just that!

I've wondered how I could integrate Blogging into my classes. The units I have developed have a strong blended learning focus - and sometimes I wonder how far to go...and is it possible to go 'too far', especially in the learners mind. I am very mindful that students are trying to learn and at times just comprehend - everything can be fresh and new...perhaps if we keep adding in new social media tools it could just be a bit too much for some?

Before I answer this I believe it's best to explain about my teaching style.

I know I now spend a substantial amount of time educating my students on my teaching and learning approaches (I have units / subjects of about 150 students). I didn't when I first started at UC and many students struggled, because they were used to a more traditional approach to learning: the lecture and the tute - and going page by page in a text book (often a dull text book!).

My approach is more dynamic, very much focused on blended learning and Work Integrated Learning. It is formative in style and has that great buzz / jargon of 'constructive alignment'. I believe by not trusting my students and explaining my teaching style meant that many students struggled because it seemed they were just trying to coping with the learning of new material in a university context - then I was expecting them to understand and adjust to vastly different teaching styles in their new learning environment. They weren't used to the freedom, flexibility and some appeared not to want to be independent learners. I came to this conclusion as the more senior students (those in 3rd and 4th years) and mature age students coped so much better with my style.

I didn't give up though...what I did in my second semester of teaching was to trust the student more, respect them and tell them my approach. I walked and talked them through this. By giving them this respect they accepted it more, even though they said it was challenging, but they embraced it and the majority loved it. The results in my Unit Satisfaction Survey were dramatically different. In my first semester they were mid-50's and mid-60's, in my second semester they were all mid-90's. For one unit (admittedly a small unit) I got 100s! Pretty fantastic. Of course it wasn't just about explaining this teaching and learning approach to the students - I got these USS results for a range of reasons. However, I really believe this approach of discussing my style with them helped them and supported them as they had a better understanding of why I was doing something and how this assisted them.

For information, Unit Satisfaction Survey (USS) is the University of Canberra's student survey that is used to measure our teaching performance and the results provided to DEEWR).

So, would I use blogging in my teaching. One area that I could integrate it is on the Unit Moodle site and replace the announcements. This way students could respond. But then they do have this opportunity in other Forums. Interestingly, I set up a Wiki on my Moodle site and my postgraduate students asked me to convert it to a Forum. They much preferred this style...why? because...drum roll! they could see the unread posts - whereas they couldn't with a Wiki. To them it was more important to manage their time and know they had to go to a forum to read a post, than to dip in and out...with Wiki's there is an assumption that you have the time to do this. I suspect it could be the same with blogs. If the majority of online material was published via Moodle, then I couldn't imagine students would be overjoyed having to log on to another site / network to get more information, that could easily be placed on the Moodle site.

At UC we have a Yammer blog for all staff....perhaps my reaction, reflection and thoughts on this would be worth holding off for another post...it's a hmmm....reaction!

Overall, I support blended learning and believe it is useful for us as educators to explore different tools and options. But, I also believe it's important to only use them if they will add value - and not just for the sake of it. The critical thing is that students learn, are motivated and achieve against the desired learning outcomes.

Sally