Freebie Friday - Groupon in the Higher Education Classroom

Readers,

During the past few months, I have become a Groupon fanatic! The website is amazing and I purchased many groupons in the DFW area (as well as the online coupons). I am always looking for ways to merge my personal interests with my professional interests and I think that I will start purchasing groupons for my classes and our conferences (i.e. - Environmental Communication Week and the Diversity and Communication Research Symposium). I will post more about our new initiative, Environmental Communication Week, in a few days.


Since my university is located in the rural part of Texas, I try to find groupons that the students can use in the area. Some of our local businesses and organizations were featured during the past couple of weeks including, the Dublin Dr. Pepper Bottling Company, the local Drive-In Theater, and the Dinosaur Valley State Park.


I will also use this website as a teaching tool in the classroom. Companies are usually a virtual guerrilla marketing technique to communicate with their customers and the customers recruit other customers... Communication in ACTION (while taking advantage of low-cost activities/products)! :)

Have you used the Groupon website before? What do you think?


Join Groupon Now! - LINK

Millennial Professor - Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.

Learning About New Technologies - Seven Items at a Time!

Readers,


As a tenure-track professor, I have a short amount of time each day to read my e-mail and to glance over long journal articles. I attempt to stay informed about new technologies and how these technologies affect education. I usually read short technology briefs by Educause on their "Seven Things You Should Know About..." series.


Some recent topics in this series are:


- 7 Things You Should Know About Open-Ended Response Systems


- 7 Things You Should Know About Online Media Editing


- 7 Things You Should Know about Android


This series is ideal for the "professor on the go" who needs to do more with less time. Click here for the "Seven Things" series - http://www.educause.edu/ELI7Things


Millennial Professor - Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.

Make Their Day! A Different Approach to Motivating Undergraduate Students in Communication Studies Classrooms

Readers,


During the past few weeks, I started emphasizing the FISH Philosophy in my Organizational Communication course. This philosophy has four components: play, make their day, be there, and choose your attitude. One of the components that I emphasized in all of my communication studies classes in to "make their day". I am one of those eccentric communication professors who always walks to class with a briefcase in one hand and a candy container in the other hand. I use the candy container to provide incentives for the brave students who choose to provide answers or contribute stories of their personal experiences during class.


This week, I decided to incorporate my love of coupons and deals with my passion of teaching college students (like my blog). I decided to obtain as many "Free Oatmeal @ McDonalds" coupons as I possibly could in a short amount of time. At the end of my coupon collection period, I ended up with 60 coupons in all. This collection process enabled me to give "free food" coupons to my hungry college students as incentives. They LOVED it and they were very thankful for the sweet incentive. As a result of this great experience, I plan to obtain a lot of coupons from local restaurants to give as incentives to my college students to feed their mind and their hunger! :)

THINK ABOUT IT - What do you think? Additional ideas?

Millennial Professor - Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.

Spring Break is Here! - Incorporating Spring Break Pictures in Class Lectures

Readers,

We are preparing for spring break and I am very excited about traveling for non-conference purposes! Here's the interesting part of non-conference travel...I am always THINKING of examples for my courses: interpersonal communication, organizational communication, and intercultural communication. As I travel, I take pictures of artifacts (both cultural and organizational) to incorporate on my presentation slides.

Here are some pictures from my past travel adventures:

Sincerely,

Millennial Professor - Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.