An Update of Marketing Student Perceptions of Learning Activities: Structure, Preferences, and Effectiveness

Abstract

Many changes have occurred in the context of marketing education during the past decade, including the increased use of new technology-based and experiential pedagogies. To update the understanding of how students in advanced marketing courses perceive marketing pedagogies in this new context, a replication and extension of Karns’s study of student perceptions of learning activities was performed with survey responses from 227 students at eight universities. Multidimensional scaling analysis suggests that the underlying structure of these perceptions can be described by the labels: enjoyable, challenging, and real world. Internships, class discussion, and case analyses were seen by students as the learning activities that most contribute to their learning. Course Web sites and online discussion were seen as relatively less effective in contributing to student learning. Overall, it appears that marketing educators should continue efforts to imbue all learning activities with an applied, real-world orientation.