Introduction to advertising
Download the full report
This projects aim was to design, (re-)develop, quality assure, deliver and evaluate a 200 Credit Level 1 module, Introduction to Advertising, for a variety of delivery modes and contexts. In doing so it deploys a range of e-learning technologies and makes use of externally sourced repurposed and reused content which accounts for over 50% of the module learning materials.
Executive Summary
The project was divided into three phases. The first phase covered the period 1 February 2008 to 30 September 2008 and followed a design – develop – test – quality assure cycle to prepare the module for delivery at the beginning of the academic year 2008/09. This phase was a collaborative activity between the module tutor (as subject expert and expert on the type of students who would study the module), instructional designers and e-learning unit staff (who ensured that the technologies required worked effectively). The second phase comprised the first delivery of the module and subsequent evaluation. Evaluation comprised self-evaluation by the module tutor, peer evaluation by colleagues and student evaluation. The third phase took place after the initial delivery of the module and comprises improvement activities and project dissemination.
The project has two main features of wider interest. Firstly a major part of the re-usable material takes the form of captured lectures which can be replayed using the Echo360 system. This allows students to see and hear the lecturer and any content which was delivered to lecture room displays via a computer (for example the PowerPoint slides, video, audio clips etc). The lecture is indexed via the PowerPoint presentation to enable easy searching and replay in whole or in part. All module material is made available to students via the institutional repository, CURVE. Secondly the content which was re-used was not created for educational purposes per se but did have very valuable applications in education.
The main output of the project is the module itself. The 'module' comprises its design, a descriptor and a collection of content. The content comprises a series of captured lectures, associated PowerPoint presentations and lecture notes, an assessment framework, a series of online activities and a collection of advertisements, marketing plans, critical reviews of advertisements, campaign analyses, marketing data and other material used in the module. These outputs will be used to teach students. In addition the experience and materials will be used in our staff development programme, particularly activities targeted at staff new to higher education teaching.
The key project outcomes include a high quality and innovative module which will benefit a large number of students and a demonstration of the potential positive resource impact which well executed pedagogic design can deliver. In addition we have shown that modules can be effectively delivered in different ways to a variety of diverse student groups using the same content base and overall design. The project has also been a valuable contribution to the process of changing the teaching culture towards one of sharing resources.
We have learned a number of valuable lessons from the project. Whilst the experience gained from the project is invaluable and will inform our future development, the methodology employed is not immediately scalable to a large number of modules due to the resource intensive nature of the activity. In the longer term we are going to have to develop “light” module design approaches which exploit the possibilities of content re-use. Our work also suggests that we need to keep in focus the idea that 'educational resources' are not confined to those which are expressly created for educational purposes.