Teachers of the School of Integrated Communications Take Part in White Square International Festival

The "White Square" international festival of marketing and advertising is the largest event in the communications industry in Eastern Europe. It brings together leading specialists from more than 25 countries of Europe and the CIS to its site in Minsk. Among of them are teachers from the School of Integrated Communications.

As part of the business forum on the exchange of international best practices and innovations in the marketing and communications industry, Maria Mordvinova (Academic Supervisor of the Bachelor’s programme in Advertising and PR) delivered a report on "Education in the Field of Communications. What Has Changed?" Maria told the participants of the festival about the knowledge and competences which are needed for successful work in the industry.

Maria Mordvinova

Academic Supervisor of Bachelor's programme in Advertising and PR

We must realise that education in the field of communications is not only a liberal arts education.

We have moved into a new era. Now it is impossible to study without a knowledge of mathematics and programming. Practice-oriented training, which we provide for the students of our degree programmes, fully meets the modern needs of the communication market. We provide the industry with highly qualified, versatile professionals.

 

Another event on the first day of the festival was the Advertising Hackathon – an intellectual game that immerses participants in the sphere of professional communication. The game was developed by the teachers of the School. High school students and students of Belarus could try their hand at this.

Olga Afanasyeva (Deputy Dean for Admissions of the Faculty of Communications, Media and Design) led the game, evaluated the participants and awarded points along with Maria Mordvinova and Alla Kotsyuba (Associate Professor at the School of Integrated Communications).

The Advertising Hackathon uses a group format of participation (the participants were divided into teams) and consisted of two parts: a quiz and a creative task. During the quiz, the teams got acquainted with some of the modern trends and formats in the advertising industry and analyzed some relevant cases, together with their teachers. For the creative task, students were asked to develop an advertising campaign for a new mobile application. ‘The schoolchildren and students impressed us with their erudition, logic and motivation,’ said Olga Afanasyeva.

At the end of the game, the children received branded souvenirs and prizes. They also posed for the photos with the teachers. All participants of the Advertising Hackathon also received certificates confirming their participation in the event. The students of the three winning teams will receive the maximum score on their admission interviews when applying for Bachelor’s programmes ‘Advertising and Public Relations’, ‘Integrated Communications’, and ‘Data-based Communications’.

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