2nd Wednesday at the SGI Coventry

I have always wanted to attend the 2nd Wednesday events organised by the Serious Games Institute,  Coventry University Technology Park, every month but could not because of one reason or the other. However, I  made sure that I was free for the event on the 13th of February 2013.

This time the focus was on the future of learning including new approaches to learning such as: MOOCs, technology enhanced learning, game based approaches and social interactive learning. Among the speakers were Prof Paul Frere (Open University),  Dr Alastair Cameron (ITS Learning), Dr Mark Gaved (Open University), Dr Ian Dunwell (SGI) and Kathleen Stokes (Nesta). However, I was specially interested on the presentation by Dr Kaska Porayska-Pomsta from the Institute of Education on The ECHOES project on games to help children with autism. The children can explore and improve social and communicative skills through interacting and collaborating with virtual characters (agents) and digital objects controlled by an AI and tracking devices. Apparently there are some fantastic results with some children showing development after using this game. The presentation did not disappoint and I was excited when I found out that they are working on an app for the iPad.

There were other really interesting and thought provoking presentations and discussions. It was really nice to meet up with Jay (who used to work in our department) and Prof Sara de Freitas. I am definitely looking forward to attending the next event.

Values of the Marketing courses offered by Coventry University

As part of the PG courses restructuring process at Coventry University, we as PG tutors are working to ensuring that we are complying with the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). The PG team - Four lecturers including 2 of my room mates, are supposed to demonstrate how our courses and modules achieve 6 principles, viz.

1 Purpose
2 Values
3 Method
4 Research
5 Partnership
6 Dialogue

I was responsible for looking at the Values. I did not realise how difficult it would be to come up with 300 words describing the values delivered by the 4 courses/ modules offered by our Marketing and Advertising Department, viz.,

MSc Strategic Marketing
MSc International Marketing
MA Marketing Management
MA Advertising & Marketing

This was the first time I actually thought about what we are actually teaching our PG students and how this would help them in the future in their work place and as a member of society.

I will be posting the values here once they are approved.

Filling a research gap

I have had so many students asking me this question that I decided to write a blog post about this.

Filling a research gap means that :

You are not duplicating existing research.
That you have something new to contribute - in terms of theory, methodology or sometimes context.

Online Data Protection training

Attending the mandatory online Data Protection training. This training takes about 1 hours and staff can take the training at their own convenience and unlike actual training sessions, you can pause, go and get a drink, come back and continue from where you left off. It's more like a slideshow but with tests at the end.

I guess the disadvantage is that there is no interaction and you cannot ask questions when you are not clear.

Despite this drawback, there are so many advantages besides the convenience mentioned earlier. For the organisation, I guess it is cheaper for them to organise - there is no need to hire a trainer, book a room, etc. I guess we will be getting invitations to more of such training sessions in the future.

Coventry University #3 in the UK for Marketing

Based on the subject ranking for Business School subjects in the 2012 NSS, our department (Marketing) has been ranked 3rd in the UK.

Coventry University's score: 95%
Sector average score (Overall Satisfaction): 81%
Coventry’s ranking position: 3
No. of institutions with published NSS results: 52

Note: This includes all institutions who have published NSS results for each subject, which may include FE colleges and university colleges as well as universities

Research ethics training

Delivered by Prof. Marylyn Carrigan, BES ethics and governance leader at Coventry University.
"Most ethical issues in research can be resolved with common sense."

Cesim SIMBrand Simulation Game Hands-on workshop

I organised a hands-on workshop for the CESIM SIMBrand online simulation game for members of our department.

It was run by Waqas Mir from CESIM. Only 6 staff members turned up for the workshop but based on the feedback of those who attended, I felt that it was a great success overall. Even though I have successfully run this game for 4 different UG and PG classes, I still learnt a few new things in the workshop.

The new Mercede-Benz interactive ad campaign

Check out the late advertising campaign from Mercedes-Benz promoting their new A-Class model. It is the first to use Twitter, the micro-blogging tool, in this way.

They are asking Twitter users to determine the outcome of a TV ad which will be aired for the first time during this weeks X Factor.

According to the storyline, a young musician and his female friend is trying to get to a gig driving the new Mercedes and chased by the police. There are several possible endings and Twitter users decide the outcome using the tag #YOUDRIVE in their tweets.

Teaching in the New Academic Year

I will be teaching the following courses at Coventry Business School this academic year 2012 - 2013:

Under Graduate
203MKT - Marketing Management (used to be 262MKT)

Post Graduate
M05MKT - Marketing Planning
M21MKT  - E-Marketing

Previously I had taught:

M11MKT - Research Methods (Marketing)

363MKT - International Marketing Strategy and

267MKT - Principles of Marketing.


I start teaching a group of MBA Marketing students tomorrow.

Ordinary Consumers as Brand Ambassadors

We normally associate Brand Ambassadors with actors and actresses, models and sports personalities. However, you might be surprised to learn that Edaran Tan Chong Motor, the official distributors of Nissan cars in Malaysia have recently selected four lucky people out of hundreds of applicants as Nissan LEAF Ambassadors. These lucky guys are using the Nissan Leaf for six weeks and are sharing their experiences.

However, when I looked at who these lucky ambassadors were, I noticed a few familiar names. they are definitely not ordinary - at least two of them are well known bloggers in Malaysia. Jason Goh who blogs at Smashin' Popstar and Daniel Yap who blogs at Eternal hobbyist.

It does make perfect sense and is not something new as companies have been using bloggers to review (and promote) their products (and services) for a while. Bloggers are opinion leaders and several blogs have readerships that run into thousands. Studies have shown that they are perceived as more credible than even traditional media, including newspapers and may be the reason that websites of newspapers are increasingly looking like blogs. And unlike other celebrities, they do not require you to pay them millions to become a brand ambassador. Plus you get fantastic original and creative consumer generated content followed by online word-of-mouth marketing.

However, it can be risky as well. Many bloggers are known to be quite independent and speaking their mind. They might end up rubbishing your product and your brand name, if they had a bad experience using them.