You’re fired:
NIU brings excitement of
‘Apprentice’ to classroom

by Joe King

Perhaps the only thing more unlikely than the rise of reality television as a leading form of entertainment would be the emergence of the format as an outstanding teaching tool.

That is exactly what is happening, however, for students and faculty from the Department of Marketing and the Department of Communication, who this semester are engaged in a class based on “The Apprentice.” The class pits teams of marketing majors against one another to complete various marketing tasks. Filming all of the action are communication majors who are creating videos aired on the Web and the campus cable channel.

The result for both groups has been some outstanding hands-on learning, say those who are teaching the course.

“The game is teaching them some great lessons. It has been an incredible experience,” says Marketing Chair Denise Schoenbachler, who credits her son, Brett, a junior majoring in finance, and his friend, Liz Siegel, a marketing major and daughter of NIU Trustee Myron Siegel, with coming up with the idea for the class.

“The show was very popular with students last semester and we thought it had some possibilities,” says Schoenbachler, who along with Marketing Professors Carol DeMoranville and Elisa Frederickson, quickly roughed out the basics of the course and solicited applications from interested students.

By the end of final exams, they had 30 applications to fill 16 positions. “That’s when we thought we might be on to something,” Schoenbachler says.

That suspicion has been confirmed through the first half of the six-week class.

“It has been a tremendous learning tool,” Schoenbahcler says. “It is forcing students to put together all of their business principles in a much more realistic way than you could ever do in a classroom.”

DeMoranville and Fredericks, who meet with students formally once a week, and advise them on an ongoing basis, agree, saying that it has brought out the best in students.

“This endeavor has gone way beyond our expectations,” says DeMoranville. “On every level – student performance on tasks, learning about marketing, learning about team dynamics – they have all done more than we anticipated.”

The demands of the class have been almost as grueling for the faculty as for the students, says Frederickson, but the rewards have also been tremendous.

“They are so enthused that they are stopping by my office and e-mailing me all the time, so you get to see all of the work they are doing and the effort they are putting into it,” Fredericks says. “We’re also getting to see students in ways we don’t normally see in class. We’ve seen how they handle themselves in front of businessmen and even the media – they have just been so poised and professional. It’s thrilling.”

Communication Professor Laura Vazquez is equally thrilled with the commitment demonstrated by her students and the quality of the videos they have produced.

“Their videos have been fantastic. They have been putting in some very long hours,” she says. “They are learning a lot about field production aspects that we don’t always get to cover in class, but they are also learning about things like how to interface with people, how to work with teams and a whole lot about making ethical representations of people, which is tough to teach. It’s been great.”

The videos created by the students can be found online at the official Web site of the class: http://www.cob.niu.edu/apprentice/video.asp

Tasks undertaken by the class to date have included writing marketing questionnaires (to gauge attitudes about cheating in the college), raising money for the USO (they raised nearly $12,000 to buy care packages for troops), and creating ads for the student insurance program.

The one-credit independent study class runs through Oct. 4. By then, the cast of students will have been winnowed down to two teams of four. The two teams will undertake a complex, comprehensive marketing task. Members of the winning team will receive $1,000 scholarships. The second place players will receive $500 scholarships.

More information on the class, including weekly videos and updates can be found online at: http://www.cob.niu.edu/apprentice/.

9-20-04