For the past 4 days I’ve been thinking a lot about Digital Marketing and some of the ways that students could be introduced to it, and ways to get them excited to learn about it. The web is so pervasive in our everyday living, and we are actively participating everyday in many different conversations: Conversations with ourselves, our friends and acquaintances, our colleagues, with communities, strangers, and businesses. There are all these conversations that as social beings, we want to be a part of.
Following the reactions at the Ryerson Business Forum, it seems like the majority of people at my university are not even familiar with what some of the tools of web2.0 are, never mind knowing how to answer questions like “How do these tools let us participate in these?”
A few days ago one of the heads of my program said that our program (primarily Business Technology focused) doesn’t have a role to play in introducing students to the world of Digital Marketing because Digital Marketing’s isn’t about the technology. Which it isn’t so much. But while marketing may not revolve around technology, IT management doesn’t event exist without things like Digital Marketing. Without these sorts of opportunities to use technology to improve these conversations, the relevance of a program like mine diminishes.
One of the biggest opportunities that exists for my program, for now and for the next decade, is to take advantage of the lack of topics like Digital Marketing in the university environment, and to change that. One of the sub points that Mitch Joel touched on twice at last Wednesday’s event was of the opportunities in the Digital Marketing field, which dollar wise was upwards of billions of dollars. Trying to argue that Digital Marketing doesn’t fit into the scope of what a IT Management student should be actively learning to me is short sighted and closed minded.
This means, that introducing Digital Marketing and web2.0 to the university environment isn’t going to come from faculty. As students, our biggest opportunities for growth won’t ever come from faculty. This is an example where students hold all the expertise, not because students are part of a different generation, but because the real smart ones just think differently. Students need to educate themselves and share their ideas with other like minded people. The opportunities are there for them to do that also, they can do that with other students at their schools, or with people already in the industry thanks to the dozens of events and unconferences in cities like Toronto. But it’s only the students who have the motivation to take action who will going lead the movement.
The Big Question
Blogs, RSS, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Photo Sharing, Folksonomies and Tagging, Podcasts, Screencasts, and Mashups; In what sorts of ways could these tools be used to get students motivated to learn about Digital Marketing?
