Media Planning & Strategy
The purpose of the course is to introduce students to the basic principles of advertising media planning and buying and enhance their skills in creating successful media plans. Students will learn how to set objectives, develop strategies, and choose tactics to achieve communication goals. They will practice situation analysis, including the analysis of target audiences and competitors. They will refine their decision-making skills in choosing media to communicate promotional messages and acquire hands-on experience with media planning math, budgeting, scheduling, and database work. Syllabus.
Digital Analytics
Digital analytics is involved in a chain of crucial business intelligence elements. Students learn how to collect data using digital media, analyze them in Excel and other offline and online software, interpret digital analytics trends, and report these trends to clients in advertising, public relations, and other mediated communication areas. The learning objectives of the course include: developing skills to use digital analytics tools; interpreting the trends uncovered through using digital analytics tools; and practicing effective communication of digital analytics findings using various message formats. Syllabus.
Audience Analytics
How do we use data that are available in today's hyper-digital world to understand audiences? How do data help us with creating successful communication strategies? This course is devoted to learning about different types of data that defining target audiences demographically, psychographically, behaviorally, especially in terms of product/brand consumption and media/device use. Data sources and data analytics tools (Simmons Insights, Ad$pender, SimplyAnalytics, Claritas 360, Meltwater, BuzzSumo, Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Sprout Social, HootSuite, Crimson Hexagon, and other) are discussed and tried in addition to learning how to identify meaningful patterns in the sea of numbers, interpret these patterns, and report them to rela-life clients. Topics include but are not limited to brand & audience analytics metrics and solutions, MarTech Stack, social influence, return on investment, alternative methods of data analysis, and ethics. Syllabus.
Media Theory
The course covers theories that are widely used in the filed of mediated (mass) communication. The topic areas include media, technology, and information; communication; persuasion, strategic communication; journalism, among others. We will discuss fundamental theories that connect the fields of advertising/PR, journalism, and media & information and analyze different theoretical approaches from social science to critical and cultural studies. The review of theories will be a good introduction to media and information studies. It will help you to start building scholarly identity, find theories that you want to work with, and develop ideas that you want to be known for. Syllabus.
Social Marketing
The goal of this course is to teach you how marketing, branding, and other commercial strategic communication tools can be used to improve life in society. Throughout the course, you will define social good and a cause, learn the difference between social and commercial marketing, who are the stakeholders in social marketing campaigns, how to appeal to your target audience values, and how to develop and evaluate an effective social marketing strategy, among other. In addition, you will obtain and/or refine the skills to conduct primary and secondary research, critically assess previous social marketing campaigns, and learn about persuasion theories. This course is a seminar. Although it is partially based on traditional teaching techniques, such as lectures and readings, it also requires you to extensively discuss the material that you will have learned. You will have multiple opportunities to express your opinions and defend your points of view in class. In addition, you will complete several critical thinking assignments to show your understanding of and analytical approach to the material. Syllabus.
Mediation & Moderation Models: Introduction to PROCESS
This course focuses on the techniques of running conditional effects models, such moderation, mediation, moderated mediation, mediated moderation, and serial effects models. This is a condensed course, which means that there’s only so much that we can cover in five meetings. The students will acquire basic knowledge of mediation and moderation effects that will help them to develop hands-on skills in performing relevant statistical analyses. We will primarily focus on the statistical techniques of running conditional effects models using Andrew F. Hayes’ PROCESS models and macros. An advanced knowledge of SPSS is required for this course; specifically, mastery of multivariate analyses (regression and ANOVA) are the bare minimum of requirements to enroll in this course. Additionally, each student is responsible for having an active SPSS license working on his/her computer, and is expected to bring the computer to every class meeting. Finally, each student is expected to come equipped with a data set that enables her/him to run conditional effects models throughout the class. In general, this is a hands-on class that is structured to benefit you in your academic pursuits. Syllabus.
Additional courses taught since 2008 are New Media & Society (American University of Kuwait), International Cases in PR (American University of Kuwait), Research Methods (American University of Kuwait and University of Missouri), Introduction to Communication (American University of Kuwait), Principles of Journalism (University of Kuwait and University of Missouri), and News Reporting and Editing (University of Kuwait and University of Missouri). Some syllabi for these courses have been lost due to technology-related issues. I am currently trying to retrieve materials for these courses to share on this website.