Feeling the love for MKT3017

The Lecture

So I have spent most of the last week planning strategies for dealing with the whisperers in my multinational MKT3017 and generally feeling a bit crap about the job I've been doing on that module.

I had my plan - printed out the mugshots and greeted a few of the 'talkers' by name on the way in. I had run out of time a bit prepping the lecture and didn't put as much interaction in as I hoped, but I did find a couple of short video clips, and also did the thing where I asked them to show their lecture notes to their neighbour (challenging how much they were writing down).

Last week a student asked me something about the GE Model for Business Strategy - I didn't know the answer. This week I had checked it out and I went through that first. I think they were surprised.

It was really different this week. I don't know whether my delivery was better or they were still mindful of the bollocking I gave them last week

but they were with me the whole time and actually it went very well. The four French friends did start up talking at one point but I pounced on them, asked them if there was a problem, and they said not, and shut up. James and Eugene sat up on the back row and I expected them to mess about but they didn't.

Feedback

So all this week I've been getting the students to give anonymous feedback on post-it notes. Before the Friday lecture I almost didn't do it with

them - am SOOO glad I did. I couldn't believe the feedback they gave me, particularly in view of how I was feeling about the module.

The feedback reinforced the issue we'd had the previous week with talkers... but otherwise, just way better than I expected, even from the international students.

Yay!

I noted that several of the students said how much they liked participating in the virtual seminar... which reminded me to check the discussion boards....

Virtual Seminar

I set up the virtual discussion boards in Nile last week. When I checked them on Tuesday there was hardly any activity and what was there was a bit crap. I was disappointed, but sent out a note telling them that if they didn't have a go we wouldn't be doing it again. I kind of forgot about it.

After the feedback I went and had a look - and actually there was loads of new activity - from international students as well. Not many people appeared to have read the book but there was certainly some intelligent debate and analysis. I was so pleased! I went through and made positive comments on a lot of the posts this afternoon. I'll feed back on it in lecture next week. This group has gone from my zeros to my heroes in one day!