AI as Education topic in the BMS Faculty

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already part of the education and research in our department at the University of Twente. Not a common thing in a Business Administration study! Three examples of our work #utwente #ai #education #DigitalMarketing
https://www.utoday.nl/science/67758/using-ai-to-improve-education-at-the-ut

CALL FOR BUSINESSES AND ORGANIZATIONS BASED IN THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY

Interested in an AdWords campaign in partnership with one of our student groups? We look for partner companies in the UT / Saxion AdWords online Challenge.

During the last 3 years, our Bachelor students of the course @Digital Marketing for Networked Businesses in the University of Twente have participated in the Google Online Marketing Challenge, a worldwide college competition introducing students to the topic of Search Engine Advertising (SEA).

After ten years of organizing this annual challenge, Google stopped this project this year. Given the importance of SEA for the modern Digital Marketing education, we developed a new assignment in the @UT in cooperation with the EIT Digital and the Saxion University of Applied Sciences. The new challenge is quite similar to the Google Challenge but since a free-of-charge AdWords campaign and the organization are not available anymore by Google, we ask the participating partner companies a contribution covering the campaign and some of the organizational costs. 
Partner companies can count on a motivated group of students who under the supervision of our staff and external experts will develop and execute a 3-week AdWords campaign, will conduct an audit of the company website and will report the results of the project to the partner company. More details and registration form are available at the link: Registration UT AdWords Challenge

The View of future marketer on MSI research priorities 2016-2018

The Marketing Science Institute (MSI) is an important organization in the Marketing field, committed to close the gap between academia and business in this domain. One of the ways to do that is to identify emerging marketing-related topics and include them in their research agendas. In this line they regularly publish the MSI research priorities for the coming years. 

The latest report identifying the MSI the main five research priorities for 2018 -2018 has been the source of inspiration for our students taking part in the elective Master course Advanced Topics in Digital Marketing. The students had to choose a topic within the five research priorities and write an essay based on a critical literature review on the topic in question.
Forty six essays covering a wide range of topics within the MSI research themes were the result of this assignment presenting the state-of-the-art in literature around these topics.
The assignment is in line with our efforts in this course to offer to students the opportunity to get in touch with the most challenging issues of the marketing research and practice as well to present them with possible areas of research in the context of their Master Thesis or even of PhD.
This is also part of our efforts to develop the education around the theme of Digital marketing in The Netherlands to a high stage on national and European level. The vast majority of the topics chosen by the students are related to Digital Marketing indeed.

The work of the students has been bundled in a volume titled “Marketing of the 21st Century: Marketing Science Institute Research Priorities 2016-2018 through the lens of the future marketer”.

Although the essays included in the book were not meant to be of full scientific research paper quality, three of them were submitted for journal review and one has been submitted to a conference. At this moment the results of the reviews are not known.

The volume is available in PDF form to everyone interested. Our ambition is to produce a similar volume every year contributing in this way to the debate about the ongoing transformation of the marketing theory and practice in an increasingly digitized marketplace.
The volume is accessible in the Faculty News Page
https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/news/!/2017/2/168688/marketing-of-the-21st-century

Talking Digital Marketing with Google and the higher education teachers

An interesting meeting with lecturers teaching digital marketing in universities of applied sciences and the University of Twente as only research university, organized by Goolge NL in their head office in Amsterdam. Interesting discussions about improving and coordinating education in digital marketing and also great view (despite the fog) from the 21st floor of the Google offices. In the discussion was clear the enormous demand of talents / graduates of higher education in The Netherlands with skills and knowledge on digital marketing. Google attempts to help closing this gap

Creating a Digital Marketing education ecosystem in (east of) The Netherlands

The strugle of businesses and advertising agencies who are active in online marketing to find personnel with knowledge and skills on areas related to digital marketing is well known. Under pressure from the field more and more technology companies like Google, Microsoft or IBM are creating educational environments for fast-track education in various domains.
Google for example launched in the summer of this year an initiative called Google Talent Factory
targeting college students who wish to make a career in digital marketing.

The program not only offers the possibility to students to get in touch with AdWords but also brings in touch students with agencies interested to hire them. As one of the universities participating with more than 10 groups every year in the Google Online Marketing Challenge we were also approached to bring this opportunity under the attention of our students.
Google is not the only technology giant active in the education of future marketers. IBM is behind the initiative Big Data University that offers a variety of online courses. In our Master course

Advanced Topics in Digital Marketing we have included two of the courses offered namely the IBM Watson Analytics and the Big Data Introduction courses as part of the course curriculum. I could mention more such initiatives reflecting the increasing anxiety of the field about the inability of the higher education institutions to adapt their programs in Business Administration and Marketing in particular to the new market and social reality, namely that the online world has become a platform where commercial, educational, social and transaction activities are increasingly taking place.
Here in the Netherlands and also in the east of the Netherlands where out University is located we observe an increasing interest by local businesses active in digital marketing domains to get involved and assist us in our efforts to educate and provide skills to future marketers. Companies like Team Nijhuis (top Google Partner in the Netherlands), AdWise (a very successful agency in online Marketing) are companies actively participate in our Digital Marketing courses providing guest lecturers and case studies. This week I attended with some of my students an open house event by a company in Enschede (Lime Square) specialized in Neuromarketing techniques. I was very pleased to see that the CEO of this company was welcoming visits and use of their labs by our students.
Another initiative taking place in the Netherlands is that teachers / professors of Digital marketing from the country will have a first meeting in October to discuss the state of affairs of the digital Marketing in The Netherlands. Possibly a yearly symposium of Digital Marketing in Education will be the outcome of this event.
All these facts signal the creation of a digital Marketing ecosystem in this country. We as University of Twente want to be in the forefront of this effort. After all the moto of this university is High Tech - Human Touch.

Does it make sense to study Business Administration in a Technical University?

This is a question for many students interested in Business Administration. I was asked by the Facebook Portal for Greek students in the University of Twente to explain what are the advantages of our program. Among other things we offer a unique possibility to students to enter the world of Digital Marketing both in the Bachelor and in the Master programs with two electives:

The 15 EC module Digital Marketing for Networked Businesses in the Bachelor

The 5 EC course Advanced Topics in digital Marketing

The interview is available in the following link

https://www.facebook.com/notes/university-of-twente-in-holland-greece-portal/interview-of-dr-efthymios-constantinides-assistant-professor-in-digital-marketin/1202289659844736

Digital Marketing as educational topic in the University of Twente

It is some time ago that this blog was updated but last year has been a rally busy one. New courses, new challenges and new research lines together with my colleagues in the University of Twente and abroad. I will try to update the readers on the activities of the last year and keep them up-to-date on the future developments.

This year we offered for the first time to our 2nd year undergraduates of International Business Administration (IBA) the possibility to follow the elective module (15 ECs) Digital Marketing for Networked Businesses. The module proved to be very popular among students, we got 100 students, double number than we had hoped for. The module was including  a wide range of topics: "traditional" E-Marketing topics, Social Media Marketing, Big-Data and Big Data driven Marketing, Social Monitoring tools, online reputation management but also rather unique topics for a university curriculum like Internet of Things and Neuromarketing.

Sanne Heerink of Social Inc during her guest lecture

An important innovative element of the module was one of the group assignments, namely participation in the Google Online Marketing Challenge. This unique project of Google where around 3.000 groups of students from all over the world take part gets the students in touch with the practice of SEM / SEA: They have to develop a real AdWords campaign for a real business or non-profit organization with a budget of US $ 250 made available by Google. This is to my knowledge the first time that students from a Dutch research university took part in the project. The project ended with a Symposium (photo below) in the Classroom of the Future of the University of Twente where our groups presented the results of their work. The final evaluation of the campaigns was done by Google.

The Module has been quite successful if I judge from the student evaluations and the comments we received. A very big part of this success is because of all the efforts of my colleagues in the faculty and our student assistants but also due to the great presentations and help of our guest lecturers. I would like to thank all of companies who contributed lectures for their great and inspiring presentations: Team Nijhuis, Social Inc, Greenberry and Noldus.

In the meantime the results of the Google Online Marketing Challenge are known: Our groups have performed particularly well. Six groups received the STRONG and seven the GOOD ratings, not bad for a first time participation by the school.

The plans for next year are also interesting for those interested in education in Digital Marketing on Master level. Next to the existing undergraduate module Digital Marketing for Networked Business, for the first time we will offer the elective (Advanced Topics of) Digital Marketing as part of our Business Administration MSc profile Marketing and Strategy. With these courses and some more developments that are under way (I will talk about these in another post) we hope to realize our ambition to make the University of Twente the place to be for those interested for a career in Digital Marketing. We already cover with these two educational units most digital marketing skills in demand, as these are identified in a recent report of Marketing Profs.