Tell Me a Story! Blending Digital Storytelling Into Marketing Higher Education for Student Engagement

Abstract

Multimodal learning via the use of smart devices, online social interactions, and intuitive communication platforms are fundamentally changing teaching and learning settings. Consequently, educators face unique challenges around student engagement as learners increasingly look to the use of technology-enabled activities for meaningful collaboration. Within this context, this research explores the role of digital storytelling in promoting perceived individual student and group engagement, and how these interact with group functioning, in a postgraduate marketing subject. We evaluate the implementation of this assessment as an avenue to optimize the benefits of the blended learning setting. It contributes to understanding by incorporating the concept of collective, or collaborative engagement where there is a scarcity of research despite the widespread application of group assessment in business education, and marketing education in particular. We employed canonical correlation analysis as an exploratory technique to gain initial insight into its efficacy for student engagement. We contend that digital storytelling shows promise as an inherently social and interactive learning task to provide an authentic assessment for a range of marketing problems. In turn, these attributes provide a stimulating vehicle for student engagement that can promote learning and satisfaction.

Marketing Strategy Teaching Collaboration

“…Effective marketing communication learned in the classroom can take many shapes and helpful formations that engage customers in a variety of ways, and the best current marketing teaching practices often incorporate a variety of digital storytelling and engagement tools in helping students (through simulations, virtual role playing, etc.) understand how this strategic marketing communication gets conveyed in the modern marketplace (Spanjaard, Garlin, & Mohammed, 2022).…”

Analysis of factors affecting the effectiveness of face-to-face marketing learning via TikTok, YouTube and video conferencing

“…It is no surprise, therefore, that [ 50 ]emphasized that it would make sense that the use of technological tools employed in marketing classrooms would change rapidly to adapt to swift technological change. This appears to have been the case, as evidence shows that students are increasingly using ICT to collaborate in the educational process [ 51 , 52 ].…”

Embedding Canva into the marketing classroom: a dialogic and social learning approach to classroom innovation

“…Canva has impacted many areas of marketing, including practical approaches to design and distribution within the public service space (Wainwright, 2015). Despite brief mentions of Canva as part of a broader digital approach (Gala et al ., 2022; Spanjaard et al ., 2022), little has been written about embedding Canva into marketing subjects and centralising the tool as part of subject and assessment design. To our knowledge no pedagogical literature exists in terms of Canva's application in the marketing classroom.…”