2008 - Marketing Educators' Association

A NEW MODEL OF EDUCATION FOR INTRODUCTORY LEVEL MARKETING COURSES
Hideki Takei, Juniata College, Department of Accounting, Business and Economics,
1700 Moore St., Huntingdon, PA 16652; takei@juniata.edu
ABSTRACT
In small liberal arts colleges, we have had difficulties
using various teaching methods and mentoring
approaches for students when we teach introductory
marketing courses. The main cause of these
problems could be the fact that the mentioned
courses are open for students from various majors,
years, interests, and backgrounds. Especially, our
main challenge has been to consider class
management (teaching) as well as individual-level
treatment (mentoring) of students.
In this paper, the goal is to propose an educational
model to make both teaching and mentoring
effective to students from various majors in our
introductory marketing courses. To make the model
distinctive in this paper, it is called a hybrid
education model (HEM). While we have not proven
the performance of HEM yet, we think it can be
effective for such courses at small liberal arts
colleges.
INTRODUCTION
While various liberal arts colleges have tried to
increase student satisfaction by taking good care of
students, such student satisfaction is the core
strategic goal for small liberal arts colleges. At small
colleges, faculty members have been very thoughtful
about student satisfaction through teaching and
mentoring activities. Our college with approximately
1,400 total student population is quite the same.
However, we have faced various challenges in
increasing the level of student satisfaction. What
makes this challenge more difficult is a fundamental
nature of the student satisfaction. Generally
speaking, these challenges are not about simply
teaching the students but also about mentoring them
throughout their classes because student
satisfaction can be achieved only if we match their
needs for teaching and mentoring.
This can be more challenging for lecturers who are
constantly teaching introductory marketing courses.
Since such introductory courses are open for
students from various majors, years, interests, and
backgrounds, lecturers have had to carefully use
various teaching methods and mentoring
50
approaches for students who have various levels of
interests, experience, knowledge, and learning skills.
OBJECTIVES OF THIS PAPER
As described, when we teach introductory marketing
courses, which have around 45 to 50 students out of
a total student population of 1,400, we face a
serious challenge of dealing with students from
various majors, years, interests, and backgrounds in
the same classes. If we exclusively take care of
students who are business majors, we may not be
able to satisfy other students from different majors.
This problem is not only about teaching but also
mentoring, and therefore, students from different
majors may not get sufficient mentoring from us.
In order to solve these educational dilemmas in our
introductory marketing courses, we must consider
class management and individual-level treatment of
students far more carefully. We will call the class
management as teaching and the individual-level
treatment of students as mentoring.
In this paper, our goal is to propose an educational
model in order to make both teaching and mentoring
effective to students from various majors in our
introductory marketing courses. To make the model
distinctive in this paper, it is called a hybrid
education model (HEM). While we have not proven
the performance of HEM yet, we think it can be
effective for such courses at small liberal arts
colleges.
MARKETING EDUCATION AT LIBERAL
ARTS COLLEGES
When students with sufficient liberal arts education
become marketing managers, they tend to show
strong competitive advantages in managerial
flexibility in constantly changing marketing
environments (Chew & Mclnnis-Bowers, 2004;
Gillmor, 1999). This is because they usually have
wider breadths of managerial scope and better basic
managerial skills through meaningful connections
between liberal arts education and marketing
education (Chew & Mclnnis-Bowers, 2004; Vinten,
2000). We are aware of these benefits; moreover,
HEM considers them as crucial factors.