Myself and three other friends (Amanda Hanna, Sharon Lieberman and Michelle Sion) decided to divide up the textbook readings between the four of us so that we wrote notes for four chapters each and then shared them amongst ourselves. This is the first time we’ve done this. From what I’ve found so far, notes from other people haven’t been very beneficial because it’s hard to understand what points the notes are referring to, and after reading them my understanding lacks depth. This has especially been an issue since a lot of the lecture and tutorial content refers to tables and diagrams in the textbook. To be honest I have only read four chapters of the textbook in depth and would like to complete all of the readings before the exam. I would not recommend this note-sharing technique but it may work for some people, depending on their learning styles.
Further Reading
I haven’t had any particular plan when it came to further reading. I mainly looked at marketing literature or authors that were referred to in tutorials or lectures. One example was David Packard’s quote, “Marketing is far too important to leave to the marketing department,” was a good springboard into learning about the author, his reasoning and what this quote has been applied to. I found out that David Packard was from Hewlett-Packard, and my research also led me to some other articles on marketing by consultants such as Peter Drucker. I also found regularly read B& T and AdNews, which had lots of interesting examples of how Australian companies have approached new media and future marketing.
A big difficulty for me when it came to further reading was that I have a bit of an aversion to the Business section of the newspaper or to financial magazines. Furthermore, because I am not studying accounting or finance I did not feel like I needed to sift through the scary financial jargon. However, from my research I realised that I found it a lot easier and more digestible to look at online content such as the Forbes website.
I found allocating the time for wider reading quite difficult because I always found something more immediate to such as working on an assessment task. I think what I can do in future is remind myself that reading marketing articles online is an enjoyable way to take a break from my other work and a good way to stimulate critical and analytical thinking.
Tutorial Work
I’m glad that the course was not limited to content in the textbook, especially since one of the most enjoyable tutorials I’ve had out of any subject this semester involved analysing the IMC of the Blair Witch Project and the Simpsons Movie. I also enjoyed the Great Marketing Debate because the topics needed a lot of integration from the concepts we have learnt, and it also gave a taste of the high level of thinking and analysis that I need to be prepared for in the final exam.
