International competition-based coursework: Chris Liassides

Finding an interesting, fun, and engaging assignment for students to work on, as part of their coursework obligations had always been every academics' challenge. A few years ago, following the advice of a colleague, an international competition that is organized by L'Oreal Paris was brought to my attention. This is an international competition ["Brandstorm"] that the multinational corporation in question runs among university students around the world.

Every year, university students are called on to come up, in teams, a new product for L'Oreal Paris.  Every year the theme changes, but it is always based on an existing brand under the umbrella of L'Oreal Paris (having more than 22 different brands in its portfolio). 

The international competition is no longer available in Greece (due to budgetary cuts by the corporation), however, the theme is on the web and one can see every year's theme and brand. So, for the past few years, one of my coursework assignments for my second level unit "Marketing Management Strategies" is based on the aforementioned idea.

Students, in pairs, are asked to work on this idea, based on theme from a previous year.  Every year, the assignment theme changes, but the tasks that students need to engage in are the same.  It is fun for them, but very creative, where they have to apply all the marketing-based theories that they learn in this unit, as well as the knowledge they have gained from their previous year's relevant unit.

To ensure consistency with the standards of quality that we peruse at the International Faculty and the academic standards we want to maintain for the specific level of studies, the idea is adapted to include academic standing (references and critical approach). 

Students appear, over the years, to have liked such type of an assignment very much, since it puts them on the spot, under real-life-type of challenge, something that they can relate better to, and certainly engage them further. The results from the unit leader's point of view are more than satisfactory, indicating that such initiatives could indeed work, making students do well, learn, apply, and consider the whole effort as a "fun" exercise.

The idea could work for other disciplines too, so I thought of sharing this with the rest of you in an attempt to come up with more engaging, coming from the industry, type of assignments.

A ggogle search on "student <your subject> competitions 2017" will give you an idea of what happens over the world with regards to student competitions. 

Chris Liassides

BAED Senior Lecturer