2008 - Marketing Educators' Association

Chew and Mclnnis-Bowers (2004) explained
education to create the ability to connect liberal
education to business education as blending
education. Blending education can develop students’
basic managerial skills such as observation,
assessment, flexible adaptation, learning, leadership,
and communications. This is also supported by
premier commissions such as the Carnegie
Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
These institutions clearly state that business
managers need to learn more basic education in the
various fields rather than highly technical marketing
skills (Chew & Mclnnis-Bowers, 2004).
Some colleges have already tried blending
education in introductory marketing or business
courses. For example, Birmingham-Southern
College created an introductory business course
named, “Foundation of Business Thought.” This is
taught by an interdisciplinary faculty team whose
members come from the humanities, the sciences,
and business. The team teaches business from
various perspectives so that students can effectively
develop various basic managerial skills such as (1)
oral and written communication skills, (2) critical
thinking and assessment, (3) a wider scope of
business perspectives, (4) a sense of business
ethics, (5) global business perspectives, and (6) selfassessment
(Chew & Mclnnis-Bowers, 2004).
These learning outcomes are very similar to the key
elements of the successful college education which
were reported by Light (2004). Such key elements
are (1) solid basic concepts, (2) controversy
arguments, (3) group homework and group study,
(4) group presentation, and (5) group projects.
Light (2004) also mentioned that successful students
tended to be self-motivated with strong basic
knowledge, and learn material effectively through
group activities which students with different
backgrounds had to work together. As Light (2004)
made the solid basic concepts the first of his key
elements, we also think that learning basic concepts
is the most critical thing, therefore, a starting point of
the blended learning. Exams should be also
effectively used to support such basic concept
learning in introductory courses.
Myers and Myers (2007) proposed frequent exams
to make sure students learn basic concepts well.
According to them, frequent exams are very effective
since students can focus on narrower areas of study,
receive prompt feedback about their basic
knowledge, feel more confidence and competence in
the subjects, and maintain learning motivation.
51
Edwards (2007) also reported one thing that makes
exams effective. He found that self-graded exams
allow students to notice their weakness and to
maintain learning motivation in a less-stressful
learning environments. Therefore, we think that
frequent self-graded exams may be highly suitable
for our situation.
STUDENT MENTORING AT LIBERAL
ARTS COLLEGES
Effective mentoring is one of the most important
components of college education. When mentoring
exists, professors can directly support each student
in his/her career and professional development.
Such support also includes emotional and
psychosocial assistance to the students (Cox &
Orehovec, 2007). As a result, excellent mentoring
can be called a humanization of interactions
between faculty members and their students.
Mentoring is the highest and fourth level of
interaction between professors and their students.
There are four different levels of interaction: noninteraction,
functional interaction, personal
interaction, and mentoring. In the functional
interaction stage, students feel comfortable to ask
questions to professors. If functional interaction
becomes personal interaction, students tend to start
talking about their personal issues and enjoy
informal meetings and personal chatting with
professors (Cox & Orehovec, 2007). We can see
that personal interaction will be a precondition for
effective mentoring. In other words, we think that
lecturers need to have the ability to (1) start
interaction with students at some point, and (2)
satisfy the precondition quickly for the effective
mentoring.
While we discussed our responsibilities as mentors,
successful mentoring relies not only on mentors but
also on mentees. Light (2004) discussed six
prerequisites that students must satisfy in order to
be successful mentees. First, they should be certain
about academic and personal meanings of learning.
Second, they should know effective time
management. In other words, students should be
able to have sufficient time to work on their tasks
through effective time allocation. Third, they should
be able to see things from both short-term and longterm
perspectives. Especially, they should be able to
determine several short-term goals towards their
long-term goals. This includes their ability to design
and plan their long-term career development through
short-term learning components. Fourth, they should
be motivated and encouraged to apply learned
knowledge to real situations. Sustainability of