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They’re students in the new Social Media Marketing course at Yeshiva University’s Sy Syms School of Business, and if their workload sounds more like a typical day at a marketing agency than a college lecture, it’s no accident. There are no textbooks and few required readings for this course. Instead, the class operates on one simple principle: learn by doing.
“Social media has become a phenomenon in our culture, something that can’t be ignored by any kind of business or anyone who’s trying to communicate anything online,” said Assistant Professor of Marketing Steven Chan, who designed and is leading the course. “There’s no foundation to teaching this kind of thing because it’s a new medium that’s just come about in the last few years. To me it would be boring and beside the point to teach it in a textbook way.”
As Chan considered different models for the course, a call from Jonathan Struhl ‘09SB, an alumnus who ran a hugely successful social media campaign at his first job out of college and went on to create his own agency, gave him an idea. “One of the challenges undergraduates face these days is how to take the degree they earned and get a job right off the bat with those skills,” said Chan. “Great work experience is what’s going to set you apart when you enter the workforce. We thought, instead of studying case scenarios, why not make an agency out of the class and build teachings around it? It’s a completely unique idea—hopefully, this course will give students hands-on experience that’s not only going to teach them social media in a totally new way, but will help them find a job and be good at it when they graduate.”![20141113_syms_social_media_37](/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2014/11/20141113_syms_social_media_37.jpg)
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