Exploring the Divides Among Students, Educators, and Practitioners in the Use of Digital Media as a Pedagogical Tool

Abstract

Digital technologies pervade the higher education landscape as a way to build student engagement and enhance student learning and teaching. In practice, however, the ways in which these tools are implemented in marketing education appear to be ad hoc, rather than using a systematic approach to build engagement and provide students with the skill sets needed for 21st-century employment (including meta-skills, e.g., communication skills, critical thinking, technical skills in analytics, and understanding of connected consumer behavior). The research to date has built on the educator–student dyad. This article argues that an industry practitioner perspective also adds insight into how digital technology can rationally and purposefully be integrated into the marketing classroom. Using exploratory depth interviews with undergraduate students, educators, and industry practitioners, this article seeks to explore the emerging pedagogical challenges of representing these tripartite views in marketing module development and to provide recommendations for higher education institutions as to how best to do so.