CLeaR Fellows 2015 – Dr Bodo Lang

Mission Possible: Engaging students in large classes

Bodo is a senior lecturer in Marketing (Business School) where he teaches Marketing Research and Advertising and Promotion. He has taught at various levels and across a range of class sizes at the University of Auckland and other tertiary providers. Throughout his career, Bodo has had a strong focus on fostering self-directed learning and deep student engagement. He has received a number of awards for his teaching. Bodo’s research is in marketing communication, specifically word of mouth communication, gaming and financial services marketing. He is a regular reviewer for the marketing discipline’s leading education journal, and is a frequent commentator in the news media.

For his Fellowship year, Bodo will attempt to answer two lines of inquiry:

1. Which teaching resources and techniques are resulting in higher and lower levels of student engagement, and why is this?
2. How can I lift student engagement and achievement through a teaching based intervention that is easy to use and can be replicated in other courses?

He will trial this in one of the course he teaches, either MKTG202 (Marketing Research). His plan is to trial a teaching based intervention that is designed to increase engagement and achievement, yet keep the content and delivery of the course as similar as possible between Semester One, 2014 and Semester Two, 2015. He will then compare the two occurrences of the course along the following dimensions:

1. Mazer’s (2012) 13-item student engagement scale (I collected data on this in Semester One, 2014 to inform my own teaching).
2. Students engagement with CECIL content (i.e. using analytics to delve into students ELECTRONIC engagement).
3. Lecturer evaluations (scales and students open-ended comments).
4. Student achievement in the course.