Our decision not to use a specific textbook for our course was driven by the vast amount of information available through professional organizations and online sources. Marketing concepts for health promotion professionals is a course that includes some of traditional marketing content, but also explores current as well as up and coming trends in health promotion. This decision has allowed the course to follow the guidelines of the course proposal while modifying the content resources to reflect the current practices in the field.

Through our learning management system, we have included video links, on-line training modules and library modules. The library supplies electronic books, both single user and multi-user, that are linked to the course within the library module. The library module model has been expanded to several other Health Promotion courses, providing supplemental readings at no cost to student.

Students apply what they have learned in the course in a capstone project by creating a health promotion campaign. This project is evaluated on a holistic rubric to determine the success students have had with integrating the course content, design skills, and communication techniques. In further support of Open Access, selected capstone projects are added to the University’s institutional repository. By publishing student work in the institutional repository, we allow the student’s projects to extend beyond their class and classroom. Ideas constructed in the course are shared for other students, both at our university and around the world, to learn from.

One of the challenges of this “non-textbook” approach is the ongoing process of ensuring that resources are still available. Webpages are not static and are regularly updated. These must be continually checked to be sure the information provided still meets the instructional needs of the instructor and course. Web links must also be checked for accuracy. This could be considered a barrier if a course uses a common syllabus and/or multiple instructors teach a course.