Using a Digital Personal Learning Network Assignment to Teach Social Curation and Lifelong Learning in Marketing

Abstract

As the use of social media continues to grow in practice and as an academic discipline, so too does the need for marketing students (and faculty) to develop and maintain a career-focused and current knowledge warehouse of information that is optimized to their own unique life situation—hence, the creation and use of what is described as a digital personal learning network or “PLN.” This article describes a proven assignment framework, requiring students to build their own digital PLN, using widely available RSS newsfeed tools such as Feedly and Twitter Lists. Student feedback is offered to support the effectiveness of this approach and suggestions are made regarding other courses that could benefit from being taught with the support of a PLN-based assignment.