Digital Natives and the University Classroom and Beyond: Prompting Analysis, Personal Expression, and Ongoing Discourse

Students and faculty today have an abundance of interesting and important information at their disposal within seconds of a search request. Information about natural events, war, tragedy, technology developments, controversies, ethical, diversity, and environmental considerations, general descriptive statistics, and even extensive company or policy history information can serve to enrich understanding of role and usefulness of theories, strategies, and policies of companies, agencies, and governments. Our challenge as educators is to prompt students to think critically about details as well as holistically about the “big picture” and emerging pictures. With various social media tools, we now have environments that can facilitate more student to student education (and the monitoring of this process as well).

In this session, I will describe some of the techniques that I have employed over the years in attempts to capture and maintain the attention of students in my courses. I will also describe how I try to utilize the wealth of expertise in the classroom to enhance the course experience for students and for myself. I teach courses on Consumer Behavior, Digital Marketing, Advertising, and Green Marketing Management. I usually require an extensive individual research paper, in addition to traditional exams, cases, and marketing or advertising plans. I also require students to participate in online discussions. Students make suggestions for resources for papers and critique the papers/presentations of other students. Students also suggest online resources that are relevant to the textbook and lecture discussions. In-class discussions are typically exchanges between me and the students but more importantly, evolve to be exchanges between students that often carry over the online discussion board.