Watch the following videos to learn more about me and the course.

Instructor and Course Introduction

Welcome to DB 410, Creativity in the Channel of Distribution! This will be a different type of online course because there are no exams, but because there are no exams, there will be other course requirements. I'll provide some detail on three unique requirements below.

First, you will be interacting with your assigned team member(s) (4 per group) just about every week this semester. Actually, most of the time you will only be interacting with one other team member (not all 4 at once), but there will be times when you'll need to have a 4 person Zoom meeting. While I will assign your other three team members, you are free to select which of the three to work with for activities that require just one other team member. If you find that your schedule is tight and will not permit synchronously interacting on Zoom with other students, then I recommend dropping the course because you'll not only affect your success in this course, but your team members' success as well.

Second, we will all learn about the creative process from not only the PowerPoint slides and interactive Zoom sessions, but also from your discussion posts about your experiences. As noted in the syllabus, you will be expected to post to the class discussion boards for many of the modules in this course. The requirement is to generate one new discussion thread no later than Friday (midnight) of each week and to grade other classmates posts by Sunday. The purpose is to generate a record that we (all of us, as collaborators) can draw on to synthesize our own understanding of creative production. Failure to complete your posts by the due dates (both initial post and replies) will result in a "0" for that week's discussion.

Finally, we will apply the creative concepts discussed in this class to your selected project. This means you and your group members will be asked to interview others outside of the class in the data collection part of the course. I will provide as much help as I can, but it is up to you and your group members to be able to identify respondents and conduct interviews with them via Zoom (or in person) to complete your project. This is a critically important aspect of this course and if you feel hesitant in participating in this process, then, again, this is not the course for you.

My goal here is not to scare you off, but to provide you with a realistic preview of what you signed up for. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.