FULT Alumni Good Practice Case Studies
Getting students to love online case studies using video quizzes
Requiring students to complete quizzes about weekly case-study videos that emphasised particular issues in marketing (such as corporate responsibility and understanding consumers) increased the pre-class preparation rate from 30% to 95%, and participation in in-class discussions from 30% to 90%.
Authors
Dr Veronica Zixi Jiang, with student colleague, Ms Jessie Thomas.
Lecturer, Marketing, UNSW Business School
Master of Commerce student, UNSW Business School
Course
MARK5700 Elements of Marketing, first-year course in the Master of Commerce program, UNSW Business School.
Demonstration of good practice
This innovation improved students’ pre-class preparation rate from 30%-40% to 95%, and their participation in discussions from 30% to 90%. Students were more confident during discussions, and their comments were generally well-organised and supported by relevant arguments and data. As one student reflected, “These videos helped me prepare properly and give the introvert me the confidence to put forth my viewpoints in class.” In addition, because students understand theory-practice connections better if they learn from an industry expert (Gill 2011), I organised for seven senior marketing managers to provide video commentary on the cases.
Moreover, because international students often struggle to adapt to the Australian education environment and can face language and culture barriers (Foster 2012), the materials were produced using Universal Design for Learning principles: they offer captions, transcripts, and image descriptions in easy-to-read sans-serif fonts to minimise language and reading barriers. The focus on the Australian marketing context helps students from non-English-speaking backgrounds integrate into the profession, as well as into the Australian tertiary education environment. The practitioner interviews help students improve their career skills and employability and prepare them to be business professionals and leaders.
In 2019 this innovation received the EF Da Vinci Award for Teaching Innovation.
References
Foster, G 2012, The impact of international students on measured learning and standards in Australian higher education, Economics of Education Review, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 587- 600.
Gill, T G 2011, Informing with the Case Method: A Guide to Case Method Research, Writing and Facilitation, Informing Science Press, Santa Rosa, CA.
Koumi, J 2015, Learning outcomes afforded by self-assessed, segmented video-print combinations, Cogent Education, vol. 2, no. 1, DOI: 10.1080/2331186X.2015.1045218.
Landrigan, B 2018, Educational Film: What makes a good one and why should we care? Connections Seminar on March 14 2018, PVCE UNSW, Sydney.
Lowe, M and Robinson, M 2012, What is the case method? GlobaLens, the William Davidson Institute, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL), UNSW Teaching Gateway, https://teaching.unsw.edu.au/universal-design-learning-udl?mc_cid=9ea1dcf23d&mc_eid=45e4df13d3.
A tip for other educators
This innovation is sustainable, as the video productions are a one-off cost and the current videos can be used in different marketing courses, and the video quizzes are perfect for online-only or online-offline mixed delivery modes. It is also scalable, as the case-study methodology is used in numerous areas, including business disciplines, engineering, law, public policy and medicine (Gill 2011; Lowe and Robinson 2012); thus the video quizzes and interview approach can be adapted across many courses and programs.
Jessie's story
The online case quizzes made the concepts both memorable and easier to understand – they included engaging visuals, storytelling material, and real-world examples. The weekly quizzes had different examples that spanned many industries and countries. As a dual American/Australian, I was pleased to see examples from different parts of the world – and how they all fit in to the elements of marketing. The use of video format, with follow up questions that asked specific and leading questions helped me understand campaigns that I had never heard of before.
I also really enjoyed the follow-up videos in the tutorials. If I had written an answer that the professional in the video had also discussed, it made me feel like I understood the question perfectly. If the professional provided a different answer to the one I had, it made me think about why that was the case, and what about my personal experience had led to my conclusion.
Finally, I liked that the online quizzes were weekly, and directly related to course content. I liked how the videos and the class discussion of them encouraged students to think about why they had answered the way that they did.