Using Experiential Learning and The Flipped Classroom for GOMC Training
It turns out my training style for the Google Online Marketing Challenge has a name in pedagogical circles. Two names actually:
- Experiential learning
- Flipped classroom
Pay-per-click advertising and conversion-driven web design are very hands-on skills, similar to tying your shoe laces, driving a car and Jiu-Jistsu. These are things that can only be learned through experience. The main role of the teacher in these kinds of things is to orchestrate learning experiences.
Students still need some conceptual foundations. In the past, the only way to transmit this information was through the lecture. By force of habit centuries deep, I had prepared lectures for my students when I started teaching this. One day, I was looking at a video lecture of Analytics thought leader Avinash Kaushik so I could transmit the same info to my students. Then a realization: why not just give them the video?
This is very obvious in hindsight. But if you grew up thinking that a teacher is someone who stands in front of the classroom and spews out knowledge, this requires a huge paradigm shift. In the past, the teacher had to act as the mechanism that extracted information stored in those portable, energy-efficient storage devices called “books.” She then acts as the translation and transmission mechanism using an app called “the lecture.” Now that we have machines to do these for us, we can focus on other aspects of teaching. In the case of GOMC, the teacher needs to spend a lot of time assisting the students as they practice the skills needed for the competition. The buzzword for this style of teaching is “The Flipped Classroom”.
In a creating a training plan for this, I started by listing down the what the students need to accomplish. Here is the actual list I made when I was planning the training:
- Select a business
- Analyze that business (help using guide questions)
- Figure out the ROI of businesses (adwords math)
- Adwords strategy for that business
- Create ads for that business
- Create websites for the business and landing pages for the ads
- Practice Adwords account creation
- Learn Account structure
- Learn to make campaigns and ad groups
- Practice Adwords campaign creation (Geographic targeting, etc)
- Practice Adwords campaign multiplication using Adwords Editor
- Practice Adwords search keyword research
- Practice Adwords Search ad group creation and replication using Adwords Editor
- Practice Adwords display ad group tool
- Practice Darwinian testing of different ads
- Practice optimization of Search by cleaning up quality score
- Practice addition of negative keywords in search through common sense and by using the search terms report
- Practice optimization of display network by removing irrelevant placements
- Practice optimization of display network by removing low performing placements
- Practice addition of negative keywords by looking at the placement report
- Learn dynamic keyword insertion
The next step was to plan out activities to accomplish each of these. Once you have that, you could prepare videos, readings and sample output to help the students accomplish these tasks. You could map this out in a table, along with target dates. Here’s an example:
After the completing the training, I cleaned up the plan for future use. This version lists four general learning activities and more specific ones under each of the four.
I used Google Sites for the project website. I made a page for each activity that needed detailed instructions. The numbers in the document above refer to these pages. If you browse through the website, you’ll get a good idea of the training that the students underwent.
