This interview is a strange one for me, as I’m interviewing Lyndi Lawson who is the Minister of Education at Quirk, and who I work with everyday. Lyndi has been involved in a lot of the projects Quirk has been running in the last year or so, and I’ve come on board in the last few months for the next phase of Quirk Education. We thought it a good idea to chat through some of the things we’re excited about. Our chat transcribed below:

So Lyndi, how did you end up specialising in corporate eMarketing training?

That’s an interesting question, especially for me. It was definitely not what I had planned. I did my honours in Environmental Science at UCT, and always had the aspiration to be a writer. A position as a copywriter at Quirk seemed a step in the right direction for me. During my time here education really just sucked me in, and here I am.

What’s the difference between the more traditional education you’d get at a university and the more corporate training that Quirk is offering?

I think the fundamental difference is probably in the foundations. Traditional education comes from a more theoretical basis and corporate education traditionally comes from a more practical basis with a view to direct professional application. At university you’ll learn theory about a lot of things, but here you’ll learn theory and specifically how to apply that theory to a real life situation.

So how does an agency like Quirk get involved in this kind of education?

I think it starts slowly. I starts with us needing to find professionals to work in the eMarketing industry, through that we identified a gap. There aren’t enough professionals who have experience in eMarketing specifically. I think that’s probably a South African thing, but I also think it’s because of a gap in tertiary education. The only way we could fill that gap is by educating people ourselves, firstly our own staff and then eventually we realised that there is room to do it for people outside of Quirk, and here we are. Naturally it helps to educate clients as well.

What kind of people have been getting involved with the course and the educational materials we offer?

There is quite a range of people. Starting with large corporate’s, marketing directors feel they need to better educate themselves in this area in order to manage their teams. Obviously there are also young professionals who feel like they’ve missed something in their traditional education. They want to upskill themselves, make themselves more employable, learn a new skill that a lot of people don’t have. Earn better money, all that sort of thing. Then there are graduate students who are just starting out, who may have come across certain aspects of online but feel like they need to find a way to practically apply that and  they form a portion of our market too. Quirk education offers a way for people to conveniently upskill themselves in this area, which really applies to any marketing department in any company.

So, we have distance learning and we have the accreditation that Quirk offers. Do you maybe want to share a little bit about those two?

I think that a lot of people see them as cannibalising each other, which is definitely not the case. Distance learning is for people starting out with less knowledge, who feel like they need to learn about eMarketing right from the beginning in a structured way with a lot of support and feedback from the experts. People who do the accreditation generally are more confident and they feel like all they want is the qualification at the end of the day, or that they are comfortable with self-structured learning.

So the distance learning is more support and interaction, have you found it strange to get to know students when you don’t actually see them face to face?

It has been a really weird experience but it has been really cool. In the beginning I thought that the best part of education was the contact that you had with people and I thought that I would miss that when we started doing distance learning stuff. But I found that there are so many ways to get to know people that it didn’t actually make that much difference. And I’ve formed generally long term relationships with the people in my courses.

I think the general QuirkStation had a laugh about that when a marriage proposal came in for you through some of our online contact forms.

Thanks for bringing that up Kat (sarcastic tone) but that actually wasn't a former student.

Note from Kat: I couldn’t resist mentioning that one. :)

So what’s the next step for someone wanting to further their eMarketing education?

Click here for the online course
Here for our free textbook: eMarketing: the essential guide to online marketing
And here to learn more about our accreditation
If you have questions for Lyndi or myself, email us here.