A Social Media Practicum: An Action-Learning Approach to Social Media Marketing and Analytics

To prepare students for the rapidly evolving field of digital marketing, which requires more and more technical skills every year, a social media practicum creates a learning environment in which students can apply marketing principles and become ready for collaborative work in social media marketing and analytics. Using student newspapers as examples, the practicum adopts an action-learning approach to enhance student knowledge and skills in social media. This paper describes the structure, process, and tools that support this practical experience in a marketing course. The extent to which the practicum helps in preparing students is assessed and reported.