UNBC Commerce....whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?

The Question?

What is missing from the Commerce program at UNBC?

Currently, UNBC offers the very general areas of specifications (sounds like an oxymoron) for the undergraduate Commerce program. For those that are not familiar with it, here they are:

• Accounting
• Finance
• General Business
• Human Resources
• International Business
• Marketing

How many are there? Only six. Other major schools have ten or even twelve! Well, considering that UNBC is a relatively new university, it is not bad. However! It would be great, even awesome, for UNBC to start considering new degrees that can be added to the BComm program. Now, some may be thinking what more can there be to to a Bcomm?!?!?! *Sarcasm off* In all seriousness, UNBC only covers the basic, broad categories. After graduating, many times there would be more studying in specific areas. This may be the case for many graduates; for instance, the accountant majors. The next step after an accounting BComm? CFA, CGA, or even CA.

It is realized that incorporating these certified designations in a BComm is close or is impossible. But, what about specializations such as transportation and logistics, or real estate. Some might say real estate is so closely related to finance, that it can be considered the same degree. However, at UNBC, what differentiates a marketing degree from a finance degree? Five courses, given that one degree is already completed. Don't believe me? Here's enlightenment. So even if there's a specialization of a specialization, the Monkey Chicklets think that's just the thing to do.

Adding more onto the real estate part, what extra courses might be needed? Also, one thing that needs to be added in, is that the foundations are all completed in the first and second year (following program requirements); therefore, all specialization occurs in the latter part of the degree. So, the extra courses might be about the following:

• Urban Land Economics
• Real Estate Investment

• Real Estate Finance
• Real Estate Development
• Perhaps some required electives in geography

For all business students, with the exception of economic majors, the urban land economics might be a downside.

Transportation and logistics: "The flow of goods, information and money throughout an organization. It encompasses aspects of Finance, Marketing, and Accounting while giving you a broad picture of companies’ operations. You will learn about the efficiency and effectiveness of various transportation alternatives, warehousing and distribution, supply chain management and performance and inventory measurement techniques." This is taken from the UBC's website, but at UNBC, we are only briefly introduced to logistics in Comm 251 and Comm 350.

This is just something to think about. Taking information from other universities, York offers 16 BComm degrees, UoA offers an exceptional 17 BComm degrees, and Guelph has 9. All of these universities offer the six programs that UNBC offers; the difference is the specialization of specialization degrees (retailing, tourism, hotel related). With all this said, although we realize that it might be difficult for UNBC to gather the necessary resources, UNBC should push for higher specializations in their programs.

What is one business CLASS missing from the BComm program at UNBC?

Business Writing. How many times have different teachers demanded different formatting, or just didn't demand any formatting at all. UNBC needs a format that's constant within the business program. MLA style, Chicago style, New York Style, Toronto Style.....blaaaah. We made up the last two styles, but who knows. We have all felt the annoyance, and frustration at term papers. Losing 10% or more for a simple formatting mistake because your previous teacher told you one thing, but the current teacher wanted another.

Midterm 2 Teaser

Fun Fact: This midterm draws from chapters 7-11 of the textbook.

Hey gang. Here is some info on the midterm next week. As discussed previously, it will be much more conceptual and idea driven than the previous midterm, in which we simply dealt with a lot of terminology to get us going. I haven't received any emails to protest my lifting the computer / book / iPod ban, so this test will be refreshingly open book (open Internet, etc.). You can even leave and go to the library if you need to. You can go take a picture of something to include in your answer if it supports your case (but if you take pictures of people, remember, you need to use a consent form).

The midterm will be much like one of our work sessions in the lab, except that I will be providing more direct material to work from. The test will include four written-answer questions that apply to A) the Textbook and B) business / marketing concerns at UNBC. I will provide some material from the textbook and ask you to apply it to an appropriate institution within the University (a club, organization, department, promotional campaign, etc.).

Here's what I'm looking for in your answers: 2 to 4 paragraphs per question, demonstrating an understanding of course content (for example, the provided passage from the text book), research (finding out what that club, organization etc. does), and insight; making recommendations, instead of only describing a situation, is a good way of demonstrating insight.

You will have the full three hours to complete the midterm. During that time you may take breaks as necessary. You CAN leave the room. You CAN even talk to each other: Don't waste time having "covert" text / IM conversations. Since I'm giving you "ill-defined problems," with no Internet restrictions, information sharing is not a concern.

If tests appear to have nearly identical responses, we will need to have a talk about academic dishonesty. Otherwise, this is a conceptual, applied, idea driven written test similar to those that you would find in many Arts courses.

Answers will be prepared in a Word document, complete with URLs of any sites you are referring to. You can attach images, videos or any other documents as you see relevant to your answers. All files will be emailed to me or mailed via Blackboard.

If you have any questions, email me or post them here.

Polls: Not Just For Peelers...

Over the past three weeks there have been several different tactics used in order to drive traffic to this Blog. This week we are attempting another avenue in which traffic can be driven, and in this case feedback is given on the spot. In order to continue our analysis and provide detailed recommendations to the UNBC Commerce Student Society we feel that a poll will be extremely useful. Please help us out by sharing this post/poll with your friends to ensure that we reach everyone in cyberspace who would be interested in our endeavor. In the next three weeks, other aspects such as audio and visual clips will be utilized to again, help increase traffic flow and search results.

Please take 90 seconds out of your day and fill out the following questionnaire:


Minty Moose CSS Awareness Survey

You must be 18 or older to take part. By clicking through the above link you consent to participate. Please take note that there is no compensation for participating in this questionnaire, and that no personal information is collected. Responses are completely anonymous and stored on Canadian servers. If you have any questions, please email the course instructor, Michael Stanyer: stanyerm@unbc.ca

Canadian Universities with Facebook

Clearly some universities in Canada need to work on their marketing promotion using social networks (Facebook, Twitter...). UNBC has a student population of 4,177 students, and has over 3,331 likes on Facebook. What does this translate to? That's a 79.70% like ratio. That's a huge success. Could this be mainly due to the latest marketing scheme, the G4G? Of course we realize that liking these pages on Facebook is open to the cyber population, but we do not have the tools to generate the most accurate data. How does UNBC compare to other Universities? Here are some statistics. The numbers are from the Facebook university pages, and Wikipedia. No matter what professors say, Wikipedia is a good source of information.

UNI POP LIKES %
UNBC 4,177 3,331 79.7%
Queens 21,607 3,476 16.04%
UoT 45,009 7,139 15.86%
UBC 46,475 5,550 11.94%
Uvic 16,475 1,260 7.65%
York 50,686 3,346 6.6%
UoA 33,415 1,871 5.6%
SFU 32,940 1,831 5.55%

Social Networks are one of the cheapest ways to market your product (in this case Universities) online. Compared to much more prestigious (relatively) universities UNBC dominates in the percentage of the student population liking their university. Why?? because of simple marketing ploys used by the knowledgeable business students and faculty at UNBC, such as the G4G, where contestants were forced to “like” UNBC in order to participate in the contest.

However, this is all on the cyberspace. Many of the people in Vancouver have never heard of UNBC, let alone Prince George. Just because UNBC is having a high percentage, perhaps there are more marketing schemes to do. Marketing is a very useful concept, in which awareness can be raised through various mediums. The Monkey Chicklets believe that UNBC did a damn good job in marketing the G4G through Facebook to raise the percentage so high.

Good Job, UNBC'ers for liking UNBC (and lurkers).

Facebook as a Search Engine Optimization Tool.

As Stonehewer mentioned in a previous post the popularity of Serious Business at UNBC has primarily came from links on Facebook. However, it is not clear as to exactly how Facebook has benefited us

Linking through Facebook on individual profiles or statuses does not help SEO in terms of link building. This is because personal profiles are not index able by search engines because they are hidden behind your login. However, group and event pages (assuming they are not closed) are an exception as they are not hidden behind a login and therefore are able to be crawled by search engine. In our case (Serious Business at UNBC), this has been the UNBC JDC West Facebook page. Unfortunately this still does not help the page rank as it does not supply a proper back link. But why?

Facebook and almost all social networking sites add a no follow value to every link posted on their site, essentially what this tag does is tell the website crawlers that “Our website does not vouch for this site” therefore no rating is given. Due to this, Facebook is inefficient as a tool for internet marketers to build links, and therefore has not benefited the blog in that sense

What Facebook is good at doing for internet marketers is generating a lot of traffic for the site. Over 90% of our traffic has come from Facebook so it has certainly done a good job. SEO is not a hard science and there are conflicting opinions as to if traffic improves page rank, but one piece of evidence that supports traffics impact is the fact that 10 minutes after the beginning of class, our rank had moved up 2 positions without any new content being added or changed. This could be due to the influx of visits by our internet marketing class. Another benefit of Facebook is the awareness it can create for the site, this can then translate into link building as people link your blog to their actual site or blog if they find the information interesting.

Crouching Blogger, Hidden Badass

Crouching Blogger

The idea behind running this blog in my class was to go after keywords relevant to UNBC and the School of Business, and see just how far up the search results we could make it.




Today, we are rolling into week 4 of Serious Business. In that time, we have made good progress in search results, particularly for "UNBC Marketing." Last week we made it to #9 (first page) of Google results. In the last couple days we got knocked to #11 (second page), but we have multiple pages being returned, as both #11 and #12 positions are Serious Business posts. This is good news, and the results so far have exceeded my expectations.

You will notice that the top four results are on the UNBC domain. Given that we have no UNBC in our URL, it is not likely that we would overtake those positions. However, I consider the other 6 spots on the first page to be fair game. Our bump down over the weekend came from publication of UNBC's new University Plan, which got syndicated on Academica Group's website. Academica is a company that specializes in University and College Enrollment Management.

Seeing that Academica's post was really small, but took the 5th and 6th spot anyway, they are a tough competitor (for us anyway): Page Rank 5, Link Popularity 1034.

That happened on Monday. So what this scenario illustrates is that using blog articles to pursue search ranking is a very competitive, ongoing process. So far, we have primarily used social networking links (mostly Facebook) to drive the popularity of the site. Today in class, we will be reviewing our progress and discussing additional strategies we can employ over the last few weeks of the semester.

Hidden Badass

Some of our blogging activities land us in gray areas regarding University ethics and policies. So, instead of using mere media release forms for our guests and anyone appearing in media, I've gone ahead and secured Research Ethics Board approval. Just so everyone is clear on this, anyone you interview has to fill out some paperwork indicating their consent.



Furthermore, that doesn't license us to do ANYTHING we please. We still have to follow the rules laid out in the undergraduate calendar regarding behavior policies. Additionally, I still need to approve anything that goes live.

The next bit is more fun and MORE BADASS. Something we neglected to do is talk about monetizing the blog. With the click of a button we can allow Google to use the blog for advertising, allowing our site to generate ad money. The trade off is having ads on the site. Now, I doubt we would make much money, but I've already been positively surprised so I'm not totally dismissive of the possibility. But, of course, doing so would crack open a whole new can of worms. Most importantly, where does the money go?

Cash for CSS events? End of semester pizza party? Serious Business $5.00 Scholarships? For class members reading this, remind me to show you the blog's Monetize tab during our session today.

Keywords.. Keywords

The blog is doing great, ranking on the first page of google for the search query 'UNBC marketing' but we are still having a little bit of trouble with keyword density. The good news is, our #1 keyword is UNBC with a density of 2.62% which is respectable. The bad news is our #2 result is... share? Optimally we would like have our top 4 keywords as UNBC, Internet, Marketing, and Business. The question of course is how are we going to achieve this? By taking a quick analysis of keyword density of some recent posts using Site report Card (a great tool for beginning internet marketers) I have found a few issues. Here are the results of a few recent posts

As you can see we have a bit of work to do. As internet marketers we need to achieve an optimal keyword density to improve our rank on on search engines. In order to do this we need to edit some of our posts to incorporate our keywords, UNBC, internet, marketing and business.

Tropical Tigers Take a ‘Bite’ out of the Alumni Association

The UNBC Alumni Association is looking for ways to connect with as many Alumni in the most meaningful (and cheap!) way possible.

Did you know 50 million people check their email by 11:30am every day?  This is an on-demand lifestyle we are engaged in and there is no cheaper, more effective channel to share information with an audience than email.  But…before sending out mass emails, it’s important to capture the focus and attention of the reader.  So, instead of addressing every communication directly to all alumni, there may be ways to ensure the communication is meaningful to individual readers.

5 key roles of e-mail:

Drive awareness. So in the case of the Alumni Assoc., we want to provide a prelude that creates a ‘want’ to look further – what’s in it for them?

Create ongoing engagement.  Relevant e-newsletters, regular alumni events, and sharing ‘who’s doing what’ from your graduating class – pictures add value as well.

Consideration.  How do we get them to actively participate in the UNBC community?  Alumni members may need to be lured.  Discounts at the NSC?  Bookstore?  GC’s to the Thirsty Moose?  Let’s get them to the campus and keep them engaged!

Drive purchasing.  This is your hardcore, ‘buy it message’.   Hmmmm, what are we selling?  A community, connections, opportunities, networking – in this case the customers should already know and (hopefully!) trust the ‘brand’. 

Retention and Cross-sell.  Focus on customer service, we need to make members feel important, not just another email to spam so make sure it is targeted.  Things like a considerate response email or personalized thank-you’s for participation.  Also, getting feedback to learn more about what worked and what didn’t to assist with future planning.

Additionally, segmenting your e-mail list to take advantage of social media interactions and the collective influence the email recipient has on others to get involved – the multiplier effect.

Finally, get creative! 

MacBook Wheel: Practical or Practical Joke??

The Onion News Network (ONN) declared on December 18, 2008, that Apple would be releasing a new MacBook that was designed without a keyboard. The MacBook Wheel is said to revolutionize the laptop industry by eliminating the keyboard and make "typing a thing of the past." It was unveiled at the annual Apple Expo by Steve Jobs.

The Macbook Wheels features include:
- an ultra thin humming bird battery which last 19 minutes before it requires charging
- virtually unbreakable unless dropped or hit
- includes an energy saving feature which turns the screen black after 4 seconds

The Macbook Wheel will be offered in 8gb for $2,599 or the upgrade to 40gb for $9,960. It is estimated to be released for purchase 3-18 months after the convention.

It is up in the air about whether hardcore Apple enthusiasts will be camping outside stores days before the release.

Re: UNBC G4G: Meaningful or Meaningless

As everyone has seen from our last blog update, we criticize (literally tore it apart) UNBC's Gold for Green. Although we are skeptical about this project, that does not mean we do not oppose it.
Many may think that we can openly criticize G4G mainly because we "hide" behind our superficial name, The Monkey Chicklets. However, it must be understood, it is for our safety - there are many, many mad/raging/angry/crazy/psycho Green people residing at UNBC.

This week, we wanted to take a more marketing perspective at G4G. Thus, we present our take on Gold for Green's STP. For all those non-business students and lurkers, STP is simply the Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning.

Segmentation: Identifying all segments for the product/service. The objectives of segmentation are: Break market into components; Regroup into market segments; Select which segment to target.

Targeting: To simply put targeting, it can simple defined in a question, "What is target?" Although this question is very simple and short, it can be more complicated as it can be broken down into further questions as follows: What percent of the population uses your brand?; What are the demographics?; Which media is the best to use?

Positioning: The science of perceptual strategy. It is based on a theory that strategy can only be planned in the mind of the consumer, not the marketplace.

Now that STP has been defined in a straight-forward manner, from what we believe anyways, how does this in any way relate to G4G? Well, perhaps many are still trying to understand the STP concept. But onwards!

Segmenting and Targeting Gold for Green Contest:

Finding how this contest was created for UNBC students, perhaps all the work has been completed before The Monkey Chicklets started. What we can look at is why they chose us (UNBC). Thus, we have fused segmenting and targeting together under this heading.

While segments can be defined in an infinite amount of ways, we can put broader parameters on how we define this segment. Blatantly, this contest is for students. The average demographic for UNBC students: Ages of 18-24; Income of $11,000 (estimated); Location of the Prince George area. Given that a 10-course year will cost approximately $600 including the variable costs of textbooks and those random-what-the-f fees, that's a total of $6000. Add on top of that the living fees, drinking binges, and food, that 4 months of hard labour disappears. So on the bright side, the $1000 prize is quite the benefit.

Since this contest is "open" (see our other post why we emphasize open), it will mainly target students - students that "like" UNBC of course. By targeting students, perhaps this contest is more than just the money, and transparencies. Perhaps, just maybe, they are trying to spread the awareness of sustainability to the non-green students. By reaching out now, to the younger generation, the cultural and social future trends can be changed. Or, The Monkey Chicklets just thought too much about it. We personally like the latter one.

Positioning of Gold for Green:

Now, going into the minds of the consumer, and not the market. What are the consumers in a contest? It's the contestants that are trying so ridiculously hard (sometimes going so far as obviously lying) to win. Well, winning is presently defined as being "liked." Everyone, including the Monkey Chicklets, would love $1000. Maybe not so much the Green Gift Basket. But hey, $1000 is a bonus. Make that $12,000 for this year's income!

How would UNBC G4G go ahead, and attract these segmented and targeted people? By positioning themselves within the university. How long did you guys see G4G banner, or posters up throughout the school? We saw it there for well over a month, before the club's bake sales took over (think about the amount of energy those cookies and muffins consumed, which therefore you consumed!). The reach pretty much covered the entire school population, since it was in the Wintergarden. Frequency happened at least twice a day. That's a pretty good advertisement to get those numbers.

We are not sure how many of lurkers read our first post, but we would like to say thanks to our faithful/loyal lurker (most likely classmate) mydogistoosmart.

We agree with your comment. How come UNBC does not have any regulations for companies that bid for the cafe/sandwich area? Hundreds of paper plates are given away for the wraps, and the napkins are free to take (I can take all of them, and evilly burn them for fun). As delicious and cheap as Tim Hortons' is, what about all those disposable cups and paper bags? UNBC is trying to change the company environment, their brand name. How will it change by having companies described above associated with it?

Lastly, we would like to end it with this thought.

G4G: I burn all my trash, I leave my computer on all day downloading movies, I leave 3 lights on in my room to adjust to my monitor, my laptop is on all day for MSN/Facebook, I drive to UNBC everyday (by myself of course), I never recycle because it's too far. Please vote for me!
34 Seconds Ago· Comment · · View Feedback (478)

Would they give me the prize because my friends voted for me?

Entrepreneurship Centre at UNBC

Great news for commerce students at UNBC. UNBC could possibly have its very own entrepreneurship centre. Nothing is final and details are very limited at the moment but we have a list of features we would like to see personally.

1. Guest speakers/Workshops- Have guest speaker events at various times throughout the year in which successful entrepreneurs (such as Dan Abraham PG Listings.ca) can share their experience and knowledge of creating a successful business. We would also like to see various workshops held, for example a successful business plan workshop or a design and creativity workshop.

2. A 'Dragons Den' Event- Once a semester a panel of successful business people and professors can be formed and students can approach the panel with their entrepreneurial ideas and receive a critique of their idea. This would be open to all UNBC students and not be competition based.

3. Create a Young Entrepreneurs society- This would fall under the Entrepreneurship centre. The purpose of this society would be to help raise awareness for the centre and spread the entrepreneurship spirit. This society could work hand in hand with the CSS and UNBC commerce program.

4. Intellectual Property Rights- Have a full time employee that specializes in intellectual property rights. This professional would not only service the entrepreneurship centre but also Prince George and the rest of the north as this service is not offered in Prince George or Northern BC in general.

5. A Mentorship or Internship Program- Provide an opportunity for existing businesses to actively participate with students/ be mentors and give them an opportunity to work with them.
- Eric, Prashat, Nasser (Cherry Bear)

Is The Web Dead??

WIRED magazine declared in a recent issue that the "the web is dead". This statement was supported by an article that states with evidence that the web is now a minor contributor in the internet world. It declared that the internet is composed of: the web, peer-to-peer, videos, and other. Slightly over half of the internet is contributed by videos, followed by equal portions to peer-to-peer and the web, and a small remainder to other (Cisco estimates).

The main notion behind the statement is that the web is on decline from previous years in which it dominated the internet. Nowadays it is much more common to see an internet user browsing apps such as Facebook on their phone. Almost all forms of useful media and information can be accessed via apps; this minimizes the use for "surfing the web" to find the same information.

Although WIRED had many valid points, the article was met with criticism from various websites. Many claim that the information provided from Cisco was manipulated to have a more dramatic impact. The web could have a much larger share depending on how videos was comprised. One website claimed that YouTube, accessed through the web, was grouped into videos, giving it a much larger share of the internet.

Depending on the user, one could bypass the web completely, with possession of a smartphone. Someone with an iPhone does not need to access the web to connect with friends, find out the weather, sport updates, and read current events, etc. In contrast it can be argued that without a smartphone, one is left to rely on the web to find the same information.

UNBC G4G: Meaningful or Meaningless

Step One: Make sure you "like" UNBC on Facebook.

Now, you must wonder why we must "like" UNBC in order to be part of this competition. We, as participants, have no choice (if we want the chance at $1000) even if we do not like UNBC in the first place (theoretically speaking). Not only that, but it shows up on our Facebook profile, and through the newsfeed network (being all our friends). Needless to say, this can be a very disguised marketing ploy to generate more attention to UNBC's Green Image.

Step Two: Answer the question "Why do you deserve gold for being green?" Be specific & limit your answer to 200 words or less.

Paradox much? How can we be specific in under 200 words or less. Not only that, should the Green people deserve a reward for being Green? The purpose of being green to lower their carbon footprint, for sustainability, and for the future of green business. Although UNBC claims to be Green, according to Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, what about business professors? They print out the entire class the powerpoint notes, not to mention it's one sided. What is the point of the Gold for Green (G4G) contest?

Step Three: Post your answer on UNBC's Facebook wall. Tell everyone you know to vote for you submission and keep checking back to make sure you're in the top 10!

To summarize step three, it means "How popular are you?" or in other terms, "How well can you market your green practices in under 200 words?" To choose the winner by the most likes sounds exactly like being Green - Cheap. Don't get the Monkey Chicklets wrong, I'm sure a lot of people aren't cheap that are green, but it's a stereotype. How many of the likes actually read the entire post? If the Monkey Chicklets were green (we're obviously not green), our friends would just have to click "like" so we have a chance to win $1000. Mind you, only the top 10 will have the opportunity to win the $1000. That's right, even if you're the best liar and the most popular, you only have a chance to win the Gold for Green.

Don't worry all you liars and popular people, you at least get the green gift bundle from UNBC Bookstore....if you're top 10.

Gold for Green - Check it out if you're really interested, especially if you're a green/sustainable person, or a marketing/business student at UNBC!

Tropical Tigers: Marketing for a Nonprofit Organization Project

The Tropical Tigers is a group of UNBC Internet Marketing students who are looking into Marketing for a Nonprofit Organization, namely the Canadian Information Processing Society known as CIPS Click here to view CIPS Canada website.

CIPS is 'Canada's Association of Information Technology Professionals' providing educational, networking, I.S.P. certification, ITCP accreditation, job postings, member discounts with partner organizations, etc. for IT professionals and students.

Our focus will be on CIPS Prince George Omineca Section and CIPS BC Society.  Our objective is to enhance awareness of the organization and promote the benefits to improve recruitment and retention of membership.

UNBC Alumni Entrepeneur

Our group interviewed Dan Abraham, founder/creator of pglistings.ca, an online real estate listings business. Dan is an UNBC alumni who completed his undergraduate degree in anthropology and education. Recently, he was offered a full scholarship to pursue an environmental science degree at UNBC which he turned down in order to continue running his new business. Pglistings.ca is an online real estate listings website that provides users specific information and a slide show driven tour of homes for sale, lease and rent in Prince George B.C. Dan has a very good understanding of internet marketing tools such as Google ads, Analytics, and search engine optimization (SEO) which helps him analyze and forecast his budget in order to keep his business venture as profitable as possible. His philosophy is to keep his website as user friendly as possible. This allows him to target the 50+ age market.

Since starting his business 10 months ago, Dan now has 12 committed agents as clients and maintains an optimal 20% market share. Dan's photography background has allowed him to create stunning visual presentations of homes while maintaining a reasonable load time. These slide show presentations give him a competitive advantage as in the past customers were inclined towards looking at print media, television and radio as primary sources of listing their homes. One of the most powerful tools Dan, and other internet marketers have at their fingertips is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a service offered by Google which tracks all incoming traffic and provides detailed analysis of how users interact with the site including their location, time spent on site and bounce rate. This service has allowed him to recognize the most attractive marketing tactics. Further- more it allows him to supply detailed statistics to his advertisers in order to sell ad space.

A piece of advice Dan leaves with us is that starting a business has a lot of risk and you need to be prepared to take that risk in order to be successful.

COMM 346 Internet Marketing: Course Materials

Eeeep. I don't have Blackboard access for my own courses yet! Harsh.

Until the Blackboard business gets resolved, students can get the course materials here.

Fall 2010 Syllabus

Welcome to Serious Business

Welcome to Serious Business at UNBC. Here's the idea: I taught COMM 346 (Internet Marketing) last year, as a new course, with a big clunky textbook, and it was booooooring. This year I'm using a small, opinionated book so we have something to discuss instead of just blasting out PowerPoints and memorizing definitions from slides. Meanwhile, I made this blog so that my students have a play ground for some hands on learning about how the web works.

Ideally, this blog will have many authors, and not just students from my Internet Marketing class. I'm hoping to get some involvement from students in other courses that I teach, and even the Commerce Student Society.

I could have made a place for discussion on Blackboard, but that would be a closed discussion. Instead, I want to pull in commentary from students in other courses, and maybe even from some other faculty members.

It's my opinion that marketing should be taught in an applied manner. Students should get hands on practice working with marketing tools and in the case of a blog, producing materials for consumption. An Internet Marketing course offers great potential to employ problem based learning with ill defined problems, and that's what I intend to do.

Honestly, students can teach themselves an Internet Marketing course with youtube, wikipedia and Wired. I don't see my role as standing at the front of the room and rattling off terminology with painfully obvious definitions. Instead, my role should be to facilitate students' genuine learning by giving them an environment to safely experiment in, help them find resources, and offer some advice as they produce real (as real as the Internet gets) products and watch how the world (wide web) reacts.

Let's get to work.