2008 - Marketing Educators' Association

APPLYING LESSONS FROM BRAIN SCIENCE TO IMPROVE MARKETING EDUCATION:
DESIGNING PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING CLASS SESSIONS
Gary L. Karns, Seattle Pacific University, School of Business and Economics,
3307 Third Ave. West, Seattle, WA 98119; gkarns@spu.edu
The understanding of several key aspects of why
and how brains learn has been growing in recent
years. Leveraging this understanding is fundamental
for improving marketing educators’ instructional
practices. This paper describes an attempt to apply
several brain science findings to the instructional
design and practice employed in a Marketing
Principles course.
BACKGROUND
The typical prescriptions for effective instructional
design include setting meaningful learning
objectives, employing a range of pedagogical
strategies appropriate for the learning objectives and
crafting learning environments that facilitate learning
all in response to the needs and abilities of the
learners. Some important brain science insights
refine this understanding. Brain science shows that
learning is related to the meaningfulness of
information, attention management, repetition and
elaboration, hierarchical organization, multi-channel
input (with emphasis on visual imagery), affective
connections, and problem-solving (Figure 1).
FIGURE 1
ABSTRACT
133
APPLICATION
The instructional design of the Marketing Principles
course in this study consciously employed many of
these insights. The concepts were made as
meaningful as possible in terms of their importance
for a business career. An intentional pattern of
repetition and elaboration was used. Problem
solving in discussion questions, ethics issue
debates, case studies and a marketing planning
project was integrated throughout the course.
Information presentations were structured
hierarchically both within and across class sessions.
Presentations were relatively rich in visual imagery.
The visual images were carried over as visual cues
that maintained linkages with concepts across
presentations. Each session’s topic drilled down
from the course’s highest order concept that
marketing is about bringing supply and demand
together and the strategic marketing management
framework.
STUDENT RESPONSE
Student course evaluation feedback has been very
positive, showing a noticeable increase in the
instructor’s student ratings. The PowerPoint® slides
had the most mentions as being helpful to the
students’ learning. One constructive criticism was
that the number of animations (i.e., builds) per
PowerPoint® slide needed to be limited.
CONCLUSION
The course redesign and, especially, the Power-
Point® slides did require a considerable amount of
effort. But, the investment will be useful for future
iterations of the course, making it a more reasonable
expenditure of effort across the longer term. Further
refinements of the course design to more completely
and intentionally integrate the building of emotional
connections and to use of other information
processing modalities, such as music, are logical
next steps. Further assessments of the value of this
approach are also needed.
References Available on Request.