Why was Ashton Kutcher recently on the cover Fast Company? His company Katalyst is leveraging his 3.9 million Twitter followers and 3.3 million Facebook friends to create a new model of engagement marketing. Is the star of MTV’s Punk’d the future of media and marketing? Maybe, maybe not. But we need to at least be asking the question - especially in the classrooms of our colleges and universities. How we are instructing our students and preparing them for a 21st century career in marketing, media or advertising?

Are engagement and interactivity really new?

Engagement and interactivity are definitely buzzwords, but they are not new concepts to education. In her classic 1912 study, Romiett Stevens found that 80 percent of class time was spent on teacher questions and student responses. I propose that if we’re going to teach engagement and interactivity we have to bring those qualities back to the modern classroom. Every discipline including marketing has its base principles and concepts, yet today’s new media environment changes the way those facts are applied faster than most textbooks and professors can keep up. Educators need to involve students not only for their own deeper learning, but also for their knowledge and understanding of new technology. They grew up with it and live it everyday.

Are universities engaging their students?

As marketing professionals we know that we must engage our target audience by presenting our client’s message in a way that is relevant to them. In the classroom our target is the student. The good news about interactivity and questioning is that you don’t have to have it all figured out ahead of time. Ask them a well thought out question and they’ll make it relevant for you.

Has the classroom changed?

By now most of classrooms have computers, projectors and Internet access. But are instructors using it and how? When I first taught I received a student comment that said, “Use more YouTube.” It would have been easy to dismiss that comment with rationalizations about the way I had to learn or that I didn’t have time to find relevant examples or dedicate classroom time
to videos. But today I use YouTube a lot. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are no longer the future. They are how our students communicate and how savvy marketers are distributing their messages through viral videos, user generated content and promotions.

Are we changing what we teach?

Are our universities going beyond the textbook to the news stories that are happening this week? An issue like behavioral targeting or Twitter libel suits didn’t exist a couple years ago and certainly isn’t in many textbooks, but I would be remiss if I didn’t cover it in class. Yet the thought of staying up to date can be overwhelming. Again, ask questions and empower the students to bring relevant examples.

Are we preparing our students?

The 2009 Digital Readiness Report was a comprehensive study on the skills prospective new hires need in today’s competitive marketing, advertising and public relations job markets. To today’s employers knowledge of social media is just as important as traditional media skills. Over 80% said knowledge of social networks is either important or very important. Other new technology knowledge that ranked 50% or higher in importance includes knowledge of blogging, podcasting, RSS, micro-blogging (Twitter), search engine optimization, email marketing, web content management and social bookmarking.

Basic strategy, planning and content is still at the heart of advertising and marketing no matter what technology exists, but our universities should take a cue from the industry that is reinventing itself as digital. The good news for educators is that the way to keep up to date and relevant is to go back to something teachers were doing a hundred years ago: ask more questions.