Marietta College Professor Grace Johnson facilitated a workshop, “Lights! Camera! - Using Film to Create Student Engagement in the Classroom,” at the inaugural Fall Educators Conference organized by the International Society of Marketing and the Midwest Business Administration Association-International.
The three-day conference took place in Nashville, Tennessee, in mid-September. The participants in the 75-minute workshop explored why film can be a valuable teaching tool, viewed example assignments created by Johnson, were mentored by Johnson through the process of creating an assignment (participants chose to work with the film The Devil Wears Prada), and then worked in small groups to create their own assignments for use in their Fall 2023 or Spring 2024 classes.
Johnson has been using film as a teaching tool for a few years with her students in Business Ethics. Two of her most effective assignments focus on ethical dilemmas in the films Dark Waters and The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.
“The visual aspect of film brings alive the ethics topics in a way reading about them cannot,” Johnson said.
Her association with film occurs not only in the classroom. Johnson is on sabbatical this semester, writing a textbook about using film to teach business ethics. Lights! Camera! Ethics! - 45 Films for Business Ethics will be used in her Business Ethics course in Spring 2024.