Two Birds, One Survey: Experiential Learning by Students and Faculty Using a Marketing Research Module: An Abstract

Abstract

Experiential learning environments and learning by doing are argued to be effective methods of instruction. Depending on their design, they can also be effective methods to instruct the instructors. This study describes a multi-part experiential learning exercise developed to be conducted across a semester in an introductory marketing research course for both student and faculty to learn by doing. Following the five general steps of the marketing research process, the exercise is designed to flexibly address both student and faculty learning objectives through the development, collection, and analysis of primary survey data on a topic purposefully selected as relevant to both parties. The version of the exercise described here focuses on the marketing curriculum and immerses students into a “real world” approach to marketing research for their own academic institution. Specifically, students evaluate their perceived current and future curriculum needs in their business school’s marketing department, while applying the research processes, techniques, and skills embedded in the learning objectives for the course. The approach is designed to capture students’ interest as they actively learn the research process while working on an authentic problem. Concurrently, faculty learn in real time from students about their preferred topics of study for curriculum planning and other areas that may need attention to improve student learning. These methods provide an opportunity for both marketing students and faculty alike to achieve their goals using a common classroom research survey module. Students not only collect and analyze the data, they actually take the survey so they understand firsthand the content, options, and types of questions. Because students create the information and work with it in each research phase, they know that their voice and findings will be used. They feel empowered and assume ownership of these important inputs to the curriculum. For faculty and the marketing area the approach is an efficient and effective experiential learning methodology and a quality improvement process, as well. It fosters student and organizational learning, inclusive of multi-year improvements that include new courses, minors, concentrations and the associated changes in outreach and informational materials.