Office Hours with Alicja Grzadziel, WU Vienna

Alicja Grzadziel is a PhD candidate and a research associate at the Institute for Interactive Marketing & Social Media (IMSM) at WU Vienna. Her research focuses on both brand communication, particularly how misleading claims affect brand perception, and ways user-generated content, such as dupe videos, can impact brands’ sales performance. 

Studying such current topics in digital marketing makes Grzadziel uniquely qualified to teach the next generation of digital marketers, who were born in an age where navigating screens is second nature. However, in her Marketing Analytics Simulation course, she often finds that undergraduate business majors are stuck in a consumer mindset. Here’s how Alicja Grzadziel uses Novela’s digital marketing simulations to inspire students to think like marketers. 

How do you incorporate Novela’s simulations into your syllabus?

“My course is like a workshop,” Grzadziel tells Novela. “There are two phases. Phase one is the lectures. Students talk about articles they’ve read, and we get into the theory. I show my students how Google Ads Manager, Meta Ads, and Pinterest Ad Manager look in real life.” 

However, Grzadziel finds that too much theory can be a bit overwhelming. 

“I know a lot of their courses are very theory-heavy. So I want them to be able to try a hands-on approach.” 

And that’s where Novela comes in. By working in pairs and small groups to complete both the Meta and Google Ads simulations, students focus on their individual scores while collectively learning in a collaborative environment, which gives students a sense of what it’s like to work on a real marketing team. 

“In phase two, I tell them, this is trying your hand at marketing. Try not to be the customer in this class. Be the marketer. Not the person who is receiving the ads.” 

How does Novela help guide students through the skill sets they learn from your lectures?

“The combination of me showing them what the tools look like in real life and being able to use those tools in the simulation is very helpful for them,” Grzadziel says. “The skills they’re learning are adaptable. It’s not just a one-time lesson to see if something sticks. They can try different strategies, and this is something they can’t do otherwise. There’s no golden solution, and success depends on their unique goals.” 

Since your course focuses on simulations, how do you grade simulation play?

As most professors know, undergraduates can be very grade-oriented. In a class focused on simulation play, devising a grading strategy that encourages experiential learning can be a challenge. Grzadziel has developed a system that emphasizes the simulation’s leaderboard and motivates students to prioritize their marketing goals. 

“I have a separate grader for each of the challenges. I download the raw data from the leaderboards. They can get three, two, or one point for the number of goals they’ve met. But I also rank them using return on investment points and the revenue points. And because we use four simulations, they can get 11 points for each challenge.”

It’s a system that Grzadziel says gets students excited about the overall success of each simulation play. 

“They try really hard to be at the top of the leaderboard. Even when they achieve all the goals, they try again and again to hone their campaigns. Especially the revenue points. Most of the students want to keep working to get more points compared to their peers.”

How does Novela compare to other simulations you’ve used?

Having taught a simulation-focused course over many semesters, Grzadziel has found that simulations focused on modern marketing challenges work best for students who are already savvy about so many aspects of the digital landscape. 

“When I first took over the course, a lot of the simulations were very outdated. There was even a simulation for email marketing. Unfortunately, students did not care about newsletters going out. It’s very difficult to teach this class to people who were born with computers in their hands. Novela’s user interface more closely resembles what they understand. Novela doesn’t look like it was made in the early 2000s and stayed that way.” 

Ready to incorporate simulations into your course? Find out how to motivate the next generation of marketers with Novela. Schedule a demo today!