My name is Nick Norris. I'm a Business
Instructor here at Ventura College. Social Media Marketing is meant to give
students the tools needed to work in and compete for, uh, jobs in a digital marketing environment. Giovanni Rodriguez: Social media is important
today, because it's in our everyday lives. Nick Norris: It's important that the students
understand that Social Media Marketing is a business function that has real
business objectives.
There's a real fiscal monetary return on investment
that, uh, marketers need to keep in mind. Hi. I'm Jennifer Kalfsbeek-Goetz, Vice
President of Academic Affairs at Ventura College and I'm just really excited to share with you our
new certificate in Social Media and Marketing. Nick Norris: With this grant, our goals for the
program were to replace textbooks that were, that cost, with zero textbook cost resources.
Give the students not only academic learning, but actual hands-on experience. For
example, record a podcast using Anchor.fm Or to create a branded Spotify playlist, or
to create a Facebook advertising campaign. Not just read about it, and talk about
it, and study it, but to actually do it.
Another objective was to give students the
experience needed to work in the industry, remotely, using technology. And, and I feel
like we've accomplished those goals. From a technology standpoint things happen really fast.
So, a textbook that was written four years ago, for example, doesn't take into account a little
thing called TikTok, maybe you've heard of it. So, we were able to kind of replicate the textbook
experience with a series of podcasts about specific topics within the major topic of
Social Media Marketing, influencer marketing, leveraging content marketing, from
a Social Media Marketing standpoint. Same thing with community management, and so far, it's been a huge success. We include
closed captioning so they are accessible and the students seem to have a really,
really, good reaction to that material.
Paola Ortiz-Munoz: It's been very beneficial
actually. Um, when I started the program I had recently started working at a non-profit and
really wanted to learn more about Social Media Marketing, and specifically on the marketing
strategies and ways that social media can help. Nick Norris: This is an industry of constant
change and it is our jobs to embrace the change in platforms, in technologies, in trends,
in how Google algorithms change every year, in how Facebook's, you know, company platforms restrictions change every year. We need
to adapt to the times, and to the changes. Paola Ortiz-Munoz: I did all my
classes online for the most part, um, and that helped a lot because like
I mentioned, I was working and so it was nice to have the ability to do a class
online and not have to commute so much. Nick Norris: And we have to imagine that some of
these trends, um, that have happened as a result of the pandemic will be ongoing, meaning
that companies will continue to want their staff to work remotely.
And so,
we're actually giving students the skills needed in order to compete in the
workplace, now, because they're prepared. They can do learning remotely. They can work
in groups remotely. They can work on projects and submit assignments remotely. All of the same
activities and behaviors that an employer would be looking for, um, our students when they go through
this class, when they go through this program, will have the abilities to accomplish
what the the employers are looking for. So, without the additional hours and
resources available from this grant, I would not have been able to dedicate the dozens, if not hundreds of hours that went
into building this class and program online.
Jennifer Kalfsbeek-Goetz: Another really
cool thing about this program is that the courses are CVC-OEI aligned, which means
that they are aligned to the highest standard of rubrics that support regular and effective
irregular and substantive interaction, as well as other really important things
including ADA compliance and accessibility. Paola Ortiz-Munoz: It's been
a great, um, experience. I've learned about different
career pathways that I can take. Nick Norris: We are training a workforce
to have good paying middle-income jobs and we're pretty darn proud of that..