Prerequisites for admission.

Access to this Bachelor’s Degree Programme requires a high school diploma or other qualification obtained abroad and recognised as suitable. Mathematics and Italian are the benchmark for the assessment of the academic background. If the students’ academic background is deemed unsuitable in some subjects following the assessment process, specific credit obligations will be assigned them, to fulfil within the first year of study. Students will be able to obtain the additional credits needed based on the procedures defined in the teaching regulations of the programme.

Educational goals

The degree programme aims to train young graduates who will work as digital marketing specialists and shall be able to:
- create and read metrics for the performance analysis of businesses in a digital environment
- profile actual or potential purchasers - traditional, omni-channel and digital
- build digital communication content addressed to social media (content and visual)
- plan social communication campaigns
- help redefine the products/services provided by relevant businesses/organisations based on the emerging profiling indications
- design and manage e-retailing, e-commerce and digital marketplace platforms

In addition to the specific knowledge, skills and abilities to deal with the digital economy, students will be able to acquire and settle tools for the interpretation of market contexts and to seize the opportunities emerging from rearrangements and the innovation of existing business models. Therefore, overcoming the preparation to more strictly disciplinary content, they will have learned the tools 'diagnosis and monitoring' necessary to read and interpret in a systematic way the unstructured information from the economic and social environment of the network. The know-how, in summary, must be accompanied by the ability 'to think, read and interpret' the flow of information to capture new strategic and operational potential.

There are four main specific learning areas of the degree programme.
The first has a quantitative focus and aims to transfer the knowledge and tools for the collection and analysis of the data available in the network. The teachings in this area offer students the knowledge for the acquisition, classification and archiving of digital data; for the use of software that allow the acquisition and management of big data; for the analysis of data with descriptive statistics, bivariate and multivariate, and with the main exploratory and confirmative techniques. Students learn the main metrics for monitoring the activity results on the web; the tools for the analysis of network contents and sentiment, and for listening to and monitoring the network reactions. Therefore, IT and statistical knowledge will be systematically integrated with the purpose of offering students the ability to coordinate and manage the entire process of acquisition, processing and analysis of network data.
With the second area of strategic-managerial focus, students learn the knowledge and tools to read and interpret innovation in business models; to evaluate the structure and profiling of digital demand; to outline digital marketing plans and integrated communication campaigns. They deepen the themes of nature and evolution of relationships with digital customers, of the management of digital communities, of co-creation processes of brand value, of brand engagement and advocacy. Finally, the specific learning in the economic-management area provides for the acquisition of knowledge for the production of communication plans on social media, with the relative measurement of performance through the definition and monitoring of appropriate indicators. Both methodologically and in terms of content, therefore, the integration of IT and marketing disciplines, necessary to achieve the specific training objectives of the programme, is an important component in the design and delivery of teaching related to the strategic management area.
The third area, of legal focus, provides the knowledge related to data protection and digital user privacy; Italian and European standards for the protection of digital property and the simultaneous granting of rights of use of information and security in business transactions.
With the fourth area, students learn macroeconomic analysis tools in the digital age; they delve into public policy issues for digital growth and new emerging competitive models. The impact of artificial intelligence and smart-production, services and working guidelines on the economic and social environment and the impact on the generation of new relationship rules, competition and collaboration between companies constitute a further thematic content of this specific area of learning.
Finally, in the three years, students will be able to follow English-speaking training activities that allow them at least a B2 level of output and to follow with profit some lessons and the experience of experts in the field that may be provided in English.

For each year of study, the teaching activity provides three training modes at the same time. Basic teachings are aimed at the sedimentation of knowledge in specific quantitative, legal, economic, strategic and marketing learning areas. Application programmes allow for deepening your knowledge, sharing emerging orientations and tools in the digital economy and launching specific operational projects, which are the forum for testing the capacity to apply knowledge and for condensing, by means of operational projects assigned to them by the steering committee, the skills acquired. In this case, co-teaching activities are envisaged with the planned and systematic participation of operators in the sector, which may bring and transfer their skills and experience gained. Each application teaching includes group projects that, animated by predefined objectives with the companies involved in the initiative and coordinated by classroom tutors, shall be publicly presented and discussed with an audience of members of the steering committee and industry experts involved in co-teaching. Internships, which boast a dedicated and increasing space for each year of the degree programme, allow the verification of the acquired knowledge and skills in a real environment. On the first and second year of study, most of university credits are dedicated to the basic knowledge of the four learning areas - quantitative, legal, economical, and strategical and managerial. University credits are combined with the teachings already addressed to the application of knowledge. The third year, made of application teachings, is almost exclusively dedicated to the experimentation of the acquired knowledge and, therefore, to the improvement of the ability to apply knowledge during both institutional training and internship experience.

All the teachings, both basic and applicative, provide the verification of the results in progress, with several tests that, in addition to detecting the level of knowledge achieved, allow you to monitor the acquisition of transversal knowledge of problem solving, teamwork, flexibility of interaction and creativity. The final results achieved in each teaching will therefore be the synthesis of an individual evaluation acquired through different verification methods.

Communication skills

The degree programme aims at providing students with the logical and presentation tools suitable for the valuation of the acquired knowledge and the development of communication skills associated with the job-oriented programme chosen. The teachings allow to acquire a technical and dedicated terminology, and in all training activities students are stimulated, through interaction, group work and the presentation of their results to the steering committee and experts in the field, the constant improvement of their analytical, argumentative and public presentation skills. The presence of English language teaching during the three years of the programme also allows the achievement of a good ability to interact, present analysis and results to an international audience. Digital Marketing graduates will then be able to interact with appropriate analytical and summary frameworks and with the setting up of appropriate schemes according to the recipients to support the business functions in their internal and external communication processes.
Communication skills are verified through the exposure and presentation of the results of the working groups on the projects assigned to them during the 'application teaching' both to an internal audience - represented by teachers and students - and an external audience made of the enterprises involved in the degree programme as internship partners for the entire duration of the study programme.

Making Judgements

The ability of students to build and express autonomy of judgment is achieved through the combination of basic and application teachings in the areas of quantitative, strategic-management and economic learning, which allow a systematic comparison between 'knowledge' and 'know-how', obtained with the presence of experts in the field who accompany the university teaching, with an interactive teaching methodology that provides for students’ active participation in the production of operational projects and evaluation in progress, which requires the development of transversal skills for the success of the final evaluation. The role of the internship becomes the context in which students, in addition to applying the acquired knowledge, strengthen their ability to express autonomous and critical judgment in the execution of the projects entrusted to them.
The verification of the autonomy of judgment is carried out both during the lessons with tests provided during the teaching classes, in which students must provide solutions to 'business challenges' that require critical judgment, and with the internship, during which students are called, with the concurrent guidance of the scientific and company tutor, to implement the project lines initiated in the 'application teachings'.

Learning skills

The training activities of the degree programme provide students with the skills to independently explore and value the acquired knowledge. The independence of learning is stimulated by a teaching methodology that requires to constantly combine the application skills experimented with the knowledge, through the interaction with the class, teachers, industry experts and tutors of internship. The training acquired during the three-year period also provides theoretical reference frameworks, methodologies and quantitative instrumentation and a deepening of economic and managerial disciplines appropriate to address subsequent study paths.
The assessment of independent learning capacity is carried out through discussion groups, organised on specific content and covering all four main learning areas, provided in the basic teachings and through the results of the application teaching projects.