In the market for further presentation success!

The Senior Lecturers for Business and Communication/English have worked on a number of collegiate projects over the years. In semester two they collaborated again to devise a brief for the NQ Business (January start) cohort. This group is made up of some of the learners from semester one involved in the Dragons' Den project (http://www.candeatsce.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/dragons-fired-up-by-student-business.html) as well as some excellent new recruits.

The two Units that were integrated were Oral Presentation Skills and Marketing: Basic Principles.

For the Marketing unit, students were asked to write a report covering two distinct areas:

1. Apply the marketing mix to the marketing of a specific product or service.
2. Apply the concept of market segmentation to the marketing of a specific product or service.

For the Oral Presentation Skills unit, the students were asked to:

1. Deliver a formal presentation where the student analyses information and/or issues. 

The key word in the criteria for Marketing is apply and for OPS the watchword is analyse.

Both SLs agreed that the students could benefit in three distinct ways: develop their writing and literacy skills by writing a formal report, increase their research methodology skills and demonstrate their knowledge of marketing principles by delivering an oral presentation on their chosen product or service.

The students were asked, for the presentation delivery, to pick out elements of their report in a structured manner, including concepts such as: segmentation (geographical, demographic, psychographic, bahavioural), the four 'Ps' - product, price, place, promotion and comment upon how effective they felt the marketing mix for their product or service was.

There was no doubt that the knowledge gained in the Marketing class was applied to an extremely high level in the oral presentation deliveries, and the students were able to anchor their learning in a structured manner.

The standard of presentations were outstanding and just three examples are noted below as way of working example. Other products analysed in report and presentation format, but not showcased in this post, included Nutella, Desigual (a Spanish fashion retailer), VW Golf 7 and Mercadona (a Spanish supermarket chain.)

In the feedback session the students said that they really enjoyed researching, writing about and presenting their findings, all seeing the benefit of the integrative process. The talks were pitched at SCQF 6 (Higher) level and everybody (presenter, audience and assessor alike) learned a great deal from the session.

It is anticipated that the same brief will be utilised in the 2013-14 academic session, as the educational rewards are there for all to see.

Example one smirnoff from Mark Hetherington

Example two walkers from Mark Hetherington

Example three kubus from Mark Hetherington