November 19, 2008

Role Playing in Education

Rohan Miller presented his findings on using Virtual Worlds/ Role Playing in Marketing education. An interesting conclusion:

-- Maybe foriegn students like RP more than locals. Likely because of the flattening of the field, by elimination of spoken communication?

-- Must have a detailed plan of activities and plots going into the exercises.

-- Industry engagement could be a future direction.

A Preliminary Review of Online Role-plays as a Tool for Experiential Learning in Marketing Education

ID: 24129
Type: Full Paper Topic: Content Development
Room: 17
Wed, Nov. 19 2:00 PM-2:30 PM

Authors:
Rohan Miller, The University of Sydney, Australia
Abstract:
Compared to marketing practitioners, marketing educators often lag in the adoption of e-learning technology. This paper explores the use of online role-plays to present learners with enhanced opportunities for interactive and experimental learning through active and immersive learning (Feinstein, Mann and Corsun 2002) to evoke higher order cognitive abilities in areas such as problem solving and judgement (Feinstein 2001). Student feedback suggests that adding online role-plays to the traditional lecture-tutorial model enables students to experientially apply theoretical applications to enhance learning. Possible future directions for role-plays in marketing communications are then discussed.

Posted by rdivecha at 05:29 PM | Comments (2)

Concept to Reality in One Week: Building a Computer Lab in Cambodia via a Facebook Application

This sounds fun, ambitious and so silicon valley: "This presentation will discuss show parts of the creation of a video blog that documented how a team of Seattle’s top developers and designers were given just one week to take the idea of building a computer lab for kids in Cambodia from concept to reality."

Relevance: Rapid Program / Team Development

Take Aways:
-- Building Apps in Facebook to fund-raise, awareness-raise, virally spread
-- ... ...

Take Aways:
-- Building Apps in Facebook to fund-raise, awareness-raise, virally spread
--
http://apps.facebook.com/labbuilder
-- Author's blog & web reality show: "A Startup A Week" profiles such rapid development projects

-- Microsoft Dreamspark: Free MS Licensed S/W for Students:

Posted by rdivecha at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)

Developing and marketing graduate-level certificate programs

What: How Institutions Market Online Certificate Programs

Relevance: Aiding and improving marketing and positioning of CFPH in collaboration with program managers.

Take Away Points:


-- A framework available for evaluation of certificate program positioning
-- Who is NOT using cert. courses as a hook? No one! But they do not explicitly state that.
-- Burrell and Grizzel, 2008 and Gibbs 2008 say that program positioning quality is not as good as department positioning within universities.
-- Usability Testing of Cert Course Public Websites is Important: Most cert course program sites took the presenters 45 minutes to comprehend.

Caveat: The research scope is certificate programs for teaching eLearning / online learning / distance. But some points relevant because the study focussed on professional grad cert programs.

Positioning e-learning graduate certificate programs: Higher education and the development of a profession

Authors:
Shahron Williams van Rooij, George Mason University, USA
Larissa Lemp, George Mason University, USA
Abstract:
Institutions of higher education are developing and marketing graduate-level certificate programs aimed at individuals seeking to enter or advance in the e-learning profession. This presentation reports the results of a content analysis of 43 higher education e-learning certificate program Web sites to determine what audiences they target, how they describe their programs and what they state differentiates their programs from the competition. Results of the study indicate that both U.S. and international institutions marketing an e-learning graduate certificate program in the U.S. are clear and explicit about who they are, what they are offering, and what target audience they are seeking to reach. However, most programs sites do not include differentiators. This suggests that the providers have yet to identify what distinguishes their certificate programs from the competition, or that they have not yet found a way to articulate those differentiators

Posted by rdivecha at 01:16 PM | Comments (0)