Planning, Teamwork Yields Successful Online Marketing Course

Dr. Anne Gottfried joined the business faculty at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2017 to add her nearly 20 years of online teaching experience to the school’s MBA program.

After working to develop a course in Marketing Management, it debuted in spring 2018 with 150 students on the class roll.

“That’s pretty demanding,” she admits, but says the experience has been very positive both for her and for her students. 

Personal Feedback

First of all, she says, especially for a course in marketing, “You have to think of students not only as students but also as your customers. I want to exceed their expectations for customer service.”

She says she makes a point to talk with students on the phone when they request a phone conference and give quick responses to their email messages.

“I try to give personal comments, grow them and stretch them to the next level.”

Gottfried, an adjunct professor the B.I. Moody III College of Business Administration, recognizes the special circumstances facing students in the online MBA program.

“They’re not like typical undergrads,” she says. “Many students are married with kids, and everybody has a different schedule.” With online classes, “you do the coursework at your own pace. Many of these students wouldn’t be able to obtain an MBA in an on-campus face-to-face program, it wouldn’t work out for most of these students with their family and work commitments. Online is the only way they accomplish an MBA degree program.”

For the marketing course, she developed assignments that would reinforce concepts and use different types of learning modalities. For example, she would introduce a learning concept with an audio lecture that included visual slides. She would reinforce that with article readings, animated videos, and additional information provided through web links; afterward, students would complete writing or discussion assignments.

Gottfried did extensive research to locate appropriate written case examples for her course that were open access — Open Education Resources that are free for people everywhere to use and repurpose.

Finding appropriate examples that stood up to the rigor Gottfried was looking for, however, was a team effort.

“Instructional Designer Carey Hamburg and I were in constant communication,” she says. “For example, I would look through Emerald for some cases that I thought would be appropriate and then Carey would review them and say, ‘Oh, this will work,’ or ‘This won’t work.’

“I would take the lead, but if I failed to find something that worked, Carey would help me out.”

Learning to Collaborate

All the while, in the background, her students were also working on a final project, an original idea for a marketing company and a marketing product or service. Collaborating in groups, they had to complete a virtual slide presentation with audio using VoiceThread technology.

VoiceThread, part of a suite of EduTools available for online teaching, allows instructors to create collections of media that can be shared as a web link to students, who can view the material on their own time and respond by adding their own video, text, or voice.

“I have received positive feedback from students stating how much they enjoyed these group projects." Gottfried said. "I was impressed with the students’ work which was both creative and fun. It worked well as a way to socialize them and get them to zone in on something they were all interested in.”

One key to such a detailed online course is that it must be totally designed up front, before the class launches.

“Then you just manage it as you go along,” she says, “which frees up my time to interact with students and accomplish other academic requirements such as research."

Maintaining contact with the Distance Learning Instructional Support team was instrumental in that readiness.

“I looked at it like a team effort. It wasn’t just me,” she says. “Even though I did a lot of work and I took the lead on everything, it wouldn’t have been the quality it was without the UL Lafayette team.”

“There is more and more demand for online education, and here at UL, it’s backed by quality structure and processes.”