Kai-Yu Wang has added another prestigious award to the growing list he has earned for innovation in teaching and learning.<\/p>\n
The Professor and Chair of Marketing, International Business and Strategy for Brock University\u2019s Goodman School of Business was recently awarded the 2020 Pearson Prentice Hall\u2019s Solomon-Marshall-Stuart Award for Innovative Excellence in Marketing Education by the American Marketing Association (AMA).<\/p>\n
Wang\u2019s Internet and Social Media Marketing course combines classroom teaching and simulations with experiential education projects that offer students hands-on training with local community organizations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t learn by reading; we learn by doing,\u201d said Syed Hashir Sher, one of Wang\u2019s former graduate students. \u201cOne day, we would make online marketing materials and campaigns. The next, we would discuss how to improve them. It was very hands-on.\u201d<\/p>\n
After several weeks of in-class learning, students are tasked with running search engine and social media marketing campaigns for their community partners, applying class concepts in various areas to provide real-world benefits. Since launching the course at the undergraduate level in 2016, Wang\u2019s student teams have collaborated with more than 40 community partners, with assistance from the experiential education team in Goodman.<\/p>\n
Sher worked with Carousel Players, a local organization that provides opportunities for children to learn, participate in and watch theatre, regardless of their socio-economic status. The small non-profit has been serving the Niagara community for almost 50 years, but community awareness was lacking, according to Sher.<\/p>\n
Through Wang\u2019s course, Sher\u2019s team planned a search engine marketing campaign that boosted engagement with Carousel Players, earning the organization more than 93,000 website impressions in the two-week period. Ticket sales and student registration increased, as well.<\/p>\n
“<\/em>We are often so busy in the day-to-day operations of our business that the students teach us as much as they are learning themselves through the experience,\u201d said Kate Leather, General Manager for Carousel Players. \u201cWorking with the student groups also provided us an opportunity to clarify our marketing strategies and objectives, which helped establish how to communicate with stakeholders who have limited experience or knowledge in the non-profit arts sector.\u201d<\/p>\n For the course design, Wang leveraged the Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant he was awarded two years ago by Brock\u2019s Centre for Pedagogical Innovation to develop the current structure of the course. It has evolved from a typical experiential education project to a partnership model.<\/p>\n To support students\u2019 work, community partners now contribute a minimum of $100 to fund the marketing campaign. Wang\u2019s request to invest in his students\u2019 work was met eagerly: clients have committed to pay an average of $370 each, totaling $9,000 from all course offerings since the new model was implemented.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to learn from mistakes in a real-world scenario,\u201d said Pradeep Kumar, who worked with Sher in the inaugural graduate-level class last term. \u201cWhen reading books or writing assignments, we don\u2019t have full exposure to digital marketing platforms. With experiential learning, we were able to use real money with real clients.\u201d<\/p>\n After the two-week digital marketing campaign is complete, students present their work and walk their clients through the process of running it, such as setting up a Facebook page or placing Google ads. Wang aims to ensure community partners benefit in the long run, equipped with new knowledge of how to maintain the campaign after the experiential learning project has concluded.<\/p>\n \u201cSome community partners have marketing teams, but some don\u2019t even have a single person who specializes in marketing,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to help small businesses that are understaffed so they can have a head start.\u201d<\/p>\n The skills Kumar developed in Wang\u2019s course were crucial for earning his co-op position in digital marketing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a really important course,\u201d said Kumar. \u201cThe digital marketing industry is growing quickly. Professor Wang\u2019s course gives students great exposure to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Wang\u2019s commitment to innovative education has garnered attention within the Brock community and beyond.<\/p>\n In addition to receiving the Solomon-Marshall-Stuart Award from the AMA this past February, Wang\u2019s course work earned him the 2018 Marketing Management Association AxcessCapon Teaching Innovation Award<\/a>. In 2019, an innovative program proposal developed by Wang in collaboration with Goodman’s experiential education team (Daniel Lonergan and David DiPietro) placed third in the MidAmerican Business Deans Association Innovation in Business Education<\/a> Award \u2014 marking the first time a Canadian school has placed for this award.<\/p>\n \u201cKai-Yu is a well-rounded, contributing member of the Goodman School of Business,” said Goodman Dean Andrew Gaudes. “His innovative approach to research, teaching and service represents our School well. Kai-Yu continues to make us proud with the well-deserved recognition he receives, both locally and among the international community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kai-Yu Wang has added another prestigious award to the growing list he has earned for innovation in teaching and learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":65242,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,7,1,4],"tags":[8865,5144,328,159,5050,714,5847,6709,5765,4811,594,4486,7338,8869,8870],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65400,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65240\/revisions\/65400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}