7 Questions on Experiential Learning at Indiana U
My students and I had to wrap our heads around what that means, and then select our advertising target. Who are we talking to? At the end of the day, this is an LMS that you want universities to adopt. Who do you speak to about this? You could talk to professors and say, "Hey, this will allow you to take the knowledge that you have and train students more effectively." That's one possible target. You could talk to students and say, "Hey, if your university adopted this system, you would have a better shot at getting into this advanced course and getting the knowledge you want." But what we settled on was the person who's in charge of education innovation, and particularly in the digital space of a university. This is the person who's most likely going to be interested in adopting a system like this.
Being advertising people, we have to look for the pain point. What is the thing that might keep the digital innovation officer awake at night? It became clear to us that they would be most interested in keeping their university on the cutting edge of educational technology. They would be most interested in offering the best courses their university has, not only to the best students, but to the widest range of students. Once we had that figured out, we talked to people who were in that role at some universities so we had a sense of how they might want to be spoken to.
One of the interesting parts about what we do in our program is that it comes from a student point of view. The students very much understand this frustration of not getting into the programs that they want, or not the getting the degrees faster. They want in-depth knowledge — they just don't want to wait six years to get it. If they could get it in three years at another university, they're going to go there. The students were able to articulate of that, and also because they were talking to people who were in this role, they were able to articulate their concerns and possibly even fears about keeping their university competitive.
CT: Students had the opportunity to do some real-world advertising work, but then also to think about innovative new educational models. What would you say they got most excited about?
Schwab: We were interested in both of those aspects. First of all, the students were thrilled to do advertising, rather than talk about advertising or see examples of advertising. They enjoyed speaking to clients who have real marketing problems that they're trying to solve. The reality of coming face-to-face with that and getting a sense of how people speak when they're solving these problems — the students found that very compelling. It's an opportunity to engage and feel like you're solving something and getting feedback. Students certainly get feedback from me in the classroom, but I'm the professor — at certain point, I assume this role that's different from a client. When students do presentations with the clients, there's a whole different energy. As a teacher, it always makes me smile to see how differently they comport themselves, speak, dress, and react with clients — it's a great thing to see it happen.
CT: What kinds of digital skills are students developing in the process of doing these advertising campaigns? Are emerging technologies like generative AI impacting what students are going to need to be prepared for this kind of real-world work?
Schwab: The term "digital skills" gets bandied around a lot. I think we need to remove the word "digital" from it — and talk about skills. Because in advertising, there's a craft to it all, to understanding the process, and nothing takes the place of a wonderful idea. No technology is ever going to get rid of the importance of that. But it's very true that students have to learn what can be a daunting range of skills. If students don't enter an undergraduate program being skilled in Adobe Creative Suite, they're not going to be competitive. Nobody is going to hire anyone who isn't highly skilled in those things.