Media releases

• Brock augmented reality marketing course receives Innovation in Business Education Award

  Thursday, October 15, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 15 October 2020 – R0155

  Brock University’s new augmented reality (AR) marketing course has been internationally recognized.

  The one-of-a-kind course offered by the Goodman School of Business recently placed first in the 2020 Innovation in Business Education Award competition by the MidAmerican Business Deans Association. The award recognizes creative and unique strategies and programs that advance the quality of higher education.

  Assistant Professor of Marketing Joachim Scholz, who created and teaches Brock’s AR Marketing course, said the award reinforces the importance for business schools to design courses with industry and consumer demand in mind.

  “The world of augmented reality is quickly advancing, and companies are starting to notice,” he said. “The Goodman School of Business is the first and only business school to offer an entire course dedicated to the strategic marketing opportunities of AR. Students who complete the course will have knowledge and experience driving creative and strategic ideation for a professionally implemented, real-world AR marketing campaign.”

  In contrast to virtual reality technology, where everything a user sees is a virtual environment, AR augments a consumer’s physical environment with digital components. For example, consumers might use their phone to visualize how a sofa might look in their living room. The sofa is digital, but everything else is real.

  In the AR Marketing course, students explore strategies and frameworks on how AR can be successfully used to build brands, create customer experiences, increase conversion in online and brick-and-mortar retail environments, and design advertising campaigns that maximize customer engagement and influence purchasing decisions.

  The course adopts a virtual agency model to complement and deepen Brock University’s strong focus on experiential education.

  A current trend in the marketing services industry, virtual agencies bring together several specialized agencies and external freelancers to collaborate with each other to fulfil a client project. It allows agencies to be nimble and avoid the large rosters of permanent staff that are usually found in full-service marketing agencies.

  For the AR Marketing course, students take on the role of strategic planners and the creative team within a virtual agency, whereas the execution of students’ strategies is completed by a specialized AR development studio on a pro bono basis.

  Working with industry professionals who execute the students’ strategies increases the realism of the course and its impact.

  In addition to the implementation partner, consultants from a professional creative agency help students conceive campaigns for the client and a pitch consultant from a professional marketing agency helps students communicate their strategy proposals in the most effective way.

  “It’s an updated version of experiential education,” said David DiPietro, Senior Experiential Education Co-ordinator, who worked with Scholz on the design of the AR Marketing course. “Students develop their strategic-thinking, creativity and problem-solving skills by taking on a variety of senior marketing agency roles and by consulting with industry experts to bring the AR Marketing project to life.”

  Although the course was originally designed to be delivered in person, it was easily converted to an online format to comply with Brock University’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

  “A virtual agency model is a great fit for online education,” said Scholz. “It’s a highly collaborative experience that provides students with superior value, especially when compared to other larger online courses. It adds realism to the course, which is especially important as marketing becomes more and more complex.”

  Goodman Dean Andrew Gaudes said winning first place in the Innovation in Business Education Award competition “is a testament to the high-quality education students are receiving from Goodman’s diverse and dedicated team of faculty and staff.”

  This is not the first year the Goodman School of Business has placed in the Innovation in Business Education Award competition. Last year, Goodman’s Internet and Social Media Marketing course led by Professor Kai-Yu Wang was awarded third place.

  “Being recognized for innovativeness in education two years in a row among some of world’s top business schools is tremendous sustained recognition for the Goodman School,” said Gaudes.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University

  [email protected] or 905-347-1970

  – 30 –

  Categories: Media releases

• New research shows what hinders young Canadians in the fight against climate change

  Wednesday, October 14, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 14 October 2020 – R0154

  A new paper published by Brock researchers finds a large majority of Canadian teens believe they can fight climate change with their individual actions — but they’re not confident how.

  “Exploration of youth knowledge and perceptions of individual-level climate mitigation action” by Gary Pickering and Xavier Fazio of Brock’s Environmental Sustainability Research Centre (ESRC), Kaylee Schoen (BA ’19) of Brock’s Department of Psychology and Marta Botta of the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, was published earlier this week in Environmental Research Letters.

  “While the climate crisis is clearly not of their making, youth need to align their lifestyle with the 2.1 tonnes of CO₂ emissions per person per year required by 2050 to prevent the worse impacts of climate change,” says Pickering, Professor of Biological Sciences and Psychology. “How prepared are they to act, and what is their knowledge of the efficacy of the personal actions available to them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?”

  With this in mind, the researchers set out to learn more about the perceptions and knowledge of actions that can mitigate climate change among Canadians aged 17 and 18.

  The paper shows that 88 per cent of participants believe they can personally affect climate change, yet their confidence in their education about those actions was low.

  “It’s a positive finding that the vast majority of youth believe their individual actions can make a difference,” says Pickering. “The fact that they don’t believe they have the knowledge about how best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through their behaviours is both a wake-up call and an opportunity for environmental educators and communicators.”

  The teens’ lack of awareness about which actions can have the biggest impact in curbing emissions suggests that more needs to be done to ensure young people aren’t lulled into a false sense of security about the effectiveness of their actions.

  “Most worryingly, the effectiveness of low-impact behaviours — such as recycling — was overestimated, and high-impact behaviours — such as having one fewer child — was underestimated, even though choosing to have one fewer child can be up to 600 times more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions than recycling,” says Pickering. “Well-intentioned youth might believe they are making meaningful contributions to climate mitigation through their behavioural choices, when in reality those actions may only be having a marginal or negligible effect.”

  The study also looked closely at the 12 per cent of participants who either denied the existence of climate change or did not believe their personal choices could have an impact on the global problem.

  “One of the key themes amongst this segment of youth is concern about the scale of the mitigation challenge, and the relative ineffectiveness of individual-level actions,” says Pickering. “This speaks in part to the need to design and strengthen interventions aimed at increasing the sense of agency amongst youth and the belief that their actions can make a meaningful difference — because, indeed, their choices over the next few decades may be critical in meeting emissions reduction targets and avoiding the more catastrophic impacts of climate change.”

  The study formed the basis of Schoen’s honours thesis in Psychology, completed under Pickering’s supervision. The recent grad says she was pleased to learn she could use her disciplinary training to study climate change, a topic that was important to her.

  “I had always considered climate science to be outside the field of psychology, but it is in fact a deeply psychological topic as it involves behavioural change,” says Schoen. The co-authored paper, based on her thesis, is her first journal publication.

  “I feel hopeful that if we educate youth properly and help them to feel empowered, we will see massive changes going forward,” she says. “Youth are aware of climate change and willing to help in a way we have never seen in previous generations — they just need to know where to start.”

  It may be worth noting the data collection for the study took place before Greta Thunberg became a public figure inspiring climate strike action around the world last fall.

  “The Greta Thunberg phenomena is an interesting one and has certainly raised awareness of the climate emergency amongst youth,” Pickering says. “Whether this has translated into greater adoption of climate mitigation actions at the individual level remains to be determined.”

  Pickering, who is now finishing a second study examining specific mitigation actions taken or considered by Canadian youth, adds that “it will be interesting to see what effect awareness of and participation in these social movements has on the lifestyle choices of young people.”

   

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University [email protected] or 905-347-1970

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  Categories: Media releases