For four decades now, William “Mack” O’Barr has taught an advertising course so popular that students are routinely turned away.
Now they’ll get another crack at it.
The first digital version of O’Barr’s “Advertising and Society” course debuts Oct. 27 through the Coursera online education platform. He hopes word will reach alums who, years and perhaps even decades later, would still like to hear what he has to say on the topic.
“Coursera draws from a very wide range of interested folks, from students to working professionals to retired people who just love learning for its own sake,” says “O’Barr, who joined the cultural anthropology faculty in 1969. “I’m sure there are likely to be some Duke alums who’d like a chance at it as well if they only knew about it.”
The class is always full when he teaches it in White Auditorium – which holds about 100 people – or the Bryan Film Theater, where 400 can enroll. In the past, students have tried to negotiate their way in, pleading that they need it for their Markets & Management certificate or other programs.
“Many just said they’d like to take it because it sounded fun and had been recommended by a friend,” he says.
Duke partnered with Coursera in 2012 to offer free online courses. Dozens of faculty members have subsequently tested the digital waters, some enrolling hundreds of thousands of students. Many students are Duke alumni who have praised their alma mater for making a broad variety of high-quality courses taught by professors they remember available for free, said Lynne O’Brien, Duke’s associate vice provost for digital and online education initiatives.
“I think professor O’Barr is on to something,” O’Brien says. “We’ve heard from a number of alums who say they seek out online courses they were sorry to miss out on while students here on campus.”
Duke Alumni Affairs is responding to this desire as well. Plans are underway for a series of small, somewhat less formal online courses created specifically for Duke alums, says Jennifer Chambers, director of alumni education. She too hears from plenty of alums who lament the course they never got to take.
“It’s the thing they missed – that one item they weren’t able to cross off their list when they were in school here,” says Chambers, a 2001 Duke graduate. “I think the ability to do it later in life is appealing to a lot of people.”
O’Barr believes the topic resonates because people have such love/hate relationships with advertising.
“It can be fun, entertaining and memorable, but also extremely in-your-face and annoying,” he says. “We rarely treat it seriously and examine what it really is, where it comes from and what effects it has on us.”
While the course content is very similar, the Coursera delivery differs greatly, O’Barr says. In many ways, the online course feels more like a television documentary than a classroom lecture, he adds.
And, of course, advertising itself has changed dramatically, so alumni from the 1970s will get a far different experience taking O’Barr’s class now than they would have as an undergraduate.
The TV commercial was king back then, O’Barr says. Today, companies aren’t telling consumers what they need as much as they’re building relationships with them.
“You can see this when you go to an Apple store and deal with sales associates – not ‘clerks’ – who are really knowledgeable,” he says. “You can try everything out on your own and be a part of the whole Apple environment. That’s the new kind of advertising.”
More information about the 7-week course is available at https://www.coursera.org/course/adsoc
