Advertisement Video and Group Presentation

This is an engaging assessment which requires conceptual thinking in terms of the module’s core content and 4 Ps of Marketing, which include decisions on product, price, place, and promotion. These are used when developing marketing strategy, and thus the assessment ties in the fundamentals of marketing quite well. Creativity is important too, as students need to develop a novel product or service idea, and create a commercial for it based on concepts and theories from the lectures.  

Video was chosen to make the assessment more engaging - video delivery for the assessment is an engaging platform, and so is allowing students to apply core theory to a problem. 

The assessment is stated to be a very global assessment of learning. The term global in this context is used to indicate a wide breadth of content coverage. Additionally, it is noted this assessment especially prepares students for the final exam, because the exam covers the same material covered in class, covered by the assessment. Further linkages to other courses on related modules can be made, in terms of the creation of content and group presentation. 

The lecturer runs individual group coaching sessions with the students a few weeks before the submission deadline. Each group meeting runs 10-15 minutes. Feedback is given on ideas and progress. Questions are asked and answered about the presentations.  

This assessment had a set marking rubric, and two independent markers who agree group marks. There was one overall mark, but sub-marks for the presentation and commercial. The task involved deriving a marketing strategy for a novel product, hence an application of the four 4 Ps of Marketing. The three main categories of the marking rubric include the marketing strategy, support of decisions, and hygiene factors. This includes time management, and a group peer review system built into the assessment. There is peer feedback after each presentation so that one syndicate team is associated with another one to ask them questions and give feedback on their presentation. This feedback does not impact marks for the team to which feedback is provided to but influences the mark of the team providing the feedback. 

Following the presentation, there is brief oral feedback provided by both lecturer and peers. There is additional written feedback for each group provided by the two markers (although aggregated) when students receive their marks for the assignment. The purpose of the feedback is to: 

• Appreciation of effort and hard work.
• Improve outcomes by reinforcing good ideas, asking students to re-think ideas that may not have met the bar, and to discuss pros and cons of implementation.
• Explanation of the mark and to show ways to further improve. 

Based on past student surveys, this assessment has received the highest possible marks for overall satisfaction. Students were able to identify the assessment involved the application of content learnt in class through lectures to devise their potentially marketable ideas. The students noted the material taught in the course was enough, if applied properly, to earn them a good mark. Students felt the assessment markings were fair representations of their strengths and weaknesses, in terms of marking feedback. This is viewed to be a 'fun' assessment, whilst allowing the students to put all of the core content of the module in practice.