The 3L Mantra to live by!

Am honored to be nominated for the annual University Teaching prize by Erasmus University Rotterdam! The event will take place this September the 4th with  Mayor Aboutaleb of Rotterdam as the guest speaker. Having heard so much about him, am looking forward to hearing his thoughts in person.  It marks 8 years of teaching at this university for me. Been quite a journey so far. Since I joined the at that time new international program in Media and Communication in 2009, I had the opportunity to design several new courses in alignment with my interests and expertise which really helped me engage the students. Exciting to have a classroom which is so international and diverse. What I love particularly is building relationships with the students, given the small classroom format. Got some interesting questions from the university press - read the full interview here . Looking forward to many more years of teaching.

Get this, after designing this simulation, I found this video on YouTube... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfDyD4avQAE ==================================================== DESIGN AN ADVERTISEMENT CAMPAIGN THEME: USE PROTECTION Instructions: Create a comprehensive campaign that identifies your 1) main goals for your ads. 2) key message 3) channels & placement of communication-aka radio, internet etc. 4) choice(s) of contraceptives. Step 1 : DESIGN and PRESENT an actual advertisement Step 2: Class analyzes your ad Step 3: Share your strategy with the class ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Group: 1 ( People : Marketing Manager; Press Agent; Advertising Rep; Creative Team) Client: WHO (World Health Organization) Target Audience: Sub Saharan Africa Client concern: Does not want to offend religious sentiment & government Excerpt of Context given to the students: BBC News (17 March 2009): Pop...

I’m a huge advocate of simulations in classrooms. You get students to take on role plays and enact within real life contexts and rest assured, these students will blow your mind away. We have traveled from Brazil to Sudan to China. From addressing the building of a factory in the Amazon to standing for elections in Sudan, these students have risen to the challenge beautifully. For instance, the Brazil case study I designed demanded that each student group represent different interests: Perenco Oil, Ecowatch, the Brazilian middle class, the government and the Survival international Group. This played out on a popular TV show, where I took on the role of “Veronica”, a famous TV show hostess. What we got was “Candy forest” representing Ecowatch battling her way with an experienced VP of Perenco Oil, with the government trying hard to play neutral. What was fascinating was that the attacks were focused on Perenco, leaving the government relatively unscathed inspite of their supportive sta...