UM Education Prize awarded to staff “Brand Management” course

8 January 2010

The Education Prize 2009 has been awarded to the staff responsible for the SBE bachelor’s course “Brand Management”: Gwen Noteborn, Nina Belei, Kelly Geyskens and Claudia Jasmand.

The Education Prize, traditionally handed out during the Dies Natalis, goes to a person or a group who has made an outstanding contribution to education at Maastricht University in the past year. Since the motto of Maastricht University is “leading in learning”, UM wants to reward staff who indeed take this motto seriously and develop innovative and inspiring teaching methods and courses.

The subject Brand Management belongs to the major Marketing in the bachelor’s programmes International Business and International Business Economics. The Department of Marketing chose to replace a written Integrated Marketing Communication Plan with a branding assignment in the virtual Internet world “Second Life”, thereby offering a new form of “experience learning” to students. 160 students were divided into 33 groups and given eight weeks time to brand a personal care product. They then had to sell their products to their fellow students on two shopping days in “Second Life”. To stimulate other students to buy their product, students had to promote their products. They did so in various manners, thereby crossing the boundaries between “Second Life” and real life. Afterwards, they received feedback on their branding strategies.

The jury of the Education Prize selected the team responsible for the Second Life assignment in Brand Management as this year’s winners, because by integrating this assignment into the curriculum, the highly-involved staff proved its awareness of current (on-line) trends. And by creating an assignment in a virtual world the team offered students a new, creative and inspiring way of learning. Students were very enthusiastic about the assignment and felt it was "a great way of applying and 'playing around' with the knowledge (…) gained during the course". 90% of all students said they would rather do the “Second Life” project than a written report, and 93% would recommend using “Second Life” as an educational tool again. All of this was reflected in student’s course evaluations, resulting in an average course grade of 8.05, significantly higher than in previous years.

The Education Prize consists of a sculpture, a certificate and two monetary prizes (one for private and one for job-related purposes). Furthermore, a photo of the winner/s will be taken and exhibited in the “Gallery of the Education VIPs” on the ground level of the office of the Executive Board at the Minderbroedersberg.  

 

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