Description

This short course will prepare attendees to teach Integrated Marketing Communication from a praxis (theory-informed action) approach at the undergraduate and master’s levels through applied learning projects. Participants will leave the session with a plan to incorporate a specific IMC applied learning experience (i.e., a project for a client or a class blog) in their courses, including a short list of potential clients and projects, a student team-forming strategy, a theoretical ground for working with IMC, and a draft assessment rubric.

Target Audience

Our target audience includes new instructors who have been assigned to teach IMC or some variation (including PR, advertising, event planning, strategic persuasive writing); instructors who have taught in these areas who are looking for a more holistic approach situated in communication and rhetorical theory; and department chairs or administrators who are interested in adding an IMC focus to their curriculum but may be unsure about what an undergraduate or graduate course in IMC would look like. Our attendance minimum would be 6 and max would be 25.

Outline of Topics

The goal of this short course is to encourage participants to consider incorporating applied learning projects in their existing IMC courses or to consider an IMC approach to applied learning projects in existing public relations and/or advertising curriculum. Some of the questions that will guide our work in this short course include:

• How can we ground applied learning projects in communication and rhetorical theory?
• In the absence of outside clients, what are some applied learning projects that can fulfill applied learning outcomes?
• How can we find and recruit clients for multi-semester projects?
• How can we establish expectations for clients and for students in formal and informal ways?
• How can we develop ongoing relationships with clients to open up other areas for collaboration in our departments?

Learning Outcomes

1. Participants will leave the session with a plan to incorporate a specific IMC applied learning experience (i.e., a project for a client or a class blog) in their courses, including a short list of potential clients and projects, a student team-forming strategy, a theoretical ground for working with communication, and an draft assessment rubric.
2. The facilitators have we have accumulated a significant amount of resources, including sample syllabi, applied learning scholarship, IMC pedagogy, teaching activities, assessment documents, and other information that is housed on our password-protected “Teaching IMC” blog for the participants to access after the conference.
3. In addition, we will address ways to introduce IMC applied learning projects into an existing PR and advertising curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Teaching Methods

1. Prior to ECA, we would ask participants to decide upon a target course for the applied learning project.
2. We would also request some background demographic information to better tailor our agenda to the participants (i.e., geographic location so we can assist in developing a client short list).
3. After initial introductions and framing of the course, we will walk through a brief (15 minute) overview of the IMC curricula in which we work and some sample projects experiences.
4. We will then introduce the guiding questions for the session:

                                               i.     Why do you want to incorporate applied learning in your course?

                                             ii.     What theoretical IMC coordinates can assist you in preparing your project?

                                            iii.     What institutional and departmental requirements might you have to meet with this course project?

                                            iv.     What challenges and opportunities does your location, your department

1. Participants will then work through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of their own situations within their own institutional narrratives.
2. From this, participants will create a tentative syllabus and working outline of a course. At this point we will discuss and share teaching activities to support the learning outcomes we’ve developed along with appropriate assessment tools.
3. Because the course facilitators have extensive experience with cultivating classroom clients and service learning projects, we will provide some guidance and starting points for successful client relationships.
4. Finally, we will provide the Teaching IMC blog login and password for participants to reference after returning to their institutions.