Developing a Social Media and Marketing Course

This paper describes the process used and experiences gained in developing a social media and marketing course. As the first known paper on this topic appearing in the marketing education literature, the paper provides educators with a framework for developing similar courses. The course was developed using a sound instructional design model, the Kemp Instructional Model, and was continuously improved over a four-year cycle. The course concept entailed four distinguishing characteristics: an experiential-learning approach, a nontraditional class format, a practitioner orientation that focused on the use of social media in marketing, and the integration of a Learning Community (LC) that consisted of multiple participants with different professional perspectives and areas of expertise. Based on quantitative and qualitative evaluations collected over a four-year period from all members of the LC, the course was found to be highly successful in achieving all course objectives.