Mission Statement

"Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."

-Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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The goal of a teacher is to make students care about the topic they are learning. In a world where many people have grown to believe that college is unnecessary since they can Google and YouTube everything, it is an uphill battle to show that your course provides value that is not replicable via the internet. However, I have found that three things have helped my students care about the course and learn the materials: incorporating real-world projects and speakers, utilizing a flipped-classroom approach, and being open with my students.

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Nothing can prepare students for the workforce more than actually working on things they will do in that position and talking to people actively doing the job they want. Therefore, I have leaned heavily on my professional network to bring speakers from top corporations and those who own successful entrepreneurial ventures to give my students access to a wide breadth of experiences. For example, my digital marketing courses included speakers from major digitally focused companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Kimberly-Clark, and Wayfair. My student’s final project for one semester was to incorporate all their knowledge from the course to deliver a complete digital marketing plan to five real entrepreneurial ventures at various stages of their life cycle, some at the startup stage and some at over a million dollars in annual revenues. One of my students even received an internship from the project. All my students received evaluations of the plans they offered and were asked questions from the company leaders that any digital marketing consultant would have received. Students were also tasked with weekly blog posts on a class topic to hone their digital content creation skills and to make personal resume websites. Beyond applying their learnings, this gave them two projects they could incorporate into their portfolio of work and a digital resume they could use on the job market.

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I first learned about the flipped classroom approach at the Bentley University Teaching Workshop; however, I found that I had been using it without knowing it had a name. This method has been invaluable in guiding the setup of my course. As I have had to adapt to teaching in online, hybrid, and in-person modalities, it has been necessary to figure out how best to utilize classroom time to engage students who may be anywhere in the world or sitting in front of me. Students in my courses engaged in extended flipped methodology with the entrepreneurship group project in my first digital marketing course, a simulated bicycle manufacturing company in my buyer behavior course, and a simulated baggage company in my last two digital marketing courses. These projects required that students have already engaged in Bloom’s lower order processes of memory and understanding and to then apply their knowledge to analyze how the companies were performing, evaluate the strategies they could utilize, and create plans to move them forward. I received many comments from my students stating that applying the knowledge this way was extremely helpful in forcing them to understand what they were learning about in class. The competitive nature of the simulation game was also helpful as it made students care about what was happening and engage so that they could try to make their company the most successful.

 

Last, I have found that being open with my students about where I am in my journey of learning how to be a good professor has made them much more engaged in the class. I actively ask for feedback on what I am doing well, what they would like to see more/less of, and how I can make their experience more valuable. My lectures are very conversational, and students openly chat with me and each other using the chat box in Teams during lectures for my hybrid classes. For in-person classes, I breed this same open environment, allowing the students to learn from each other and for me to learn something I may not have known. This fosters an atmosphere where students know that I care, and therefore, they care as they want to grow and help me grow. The emails, reflection papers, and teaching evaluation comments I have received have deeply touched me. We have an excellent symbiotic relationship where I am helping them become better for the job market, and they are doing the same for me.