Diary of a Senior Marketing Professor: Advice on How to Get the Most From Student Projects

Thirty years of teaching experience imparts valuable wisdom as to how to be the most effective teacher.Senior faculty recognize the significance of applied projects in improving the learning experience.A literature review on experiential learning, project-based learning, and design thinking approaches supports this notion.Over a three-decade period of teaching the Introduction to Marketing course, a new product development project morphed into an effective, practical, and useful assignment for students.The professor discovered what worked and what did not work to develop a student experience that reinforced marketing knowledge and advanced important business competencies.This project required students, in groups, to invent a new product or service and develop a complete strategic marketing plan including a professional presentation.Projects were evaluated on the creativity of the new product ideas, the marketing mix elements, and the use of multi-media.The concept of synergy was used to bind all of the marketing mix elements together into a cohesive marketing strategy.Presentations were recorded and viewed by students who submitted self-critiques of their communication skills.Students benefitted by not only understanding marketing concepts, but also developed communication, teamwork, and leadership proficiencies.Through qualitative analysis of the projects over a 30 year period, this paper provides advice to assist instructors in the execution of a new product development project to enhance student learning and outlines do's and don'ts, which can be generalized to other student projects.Recommendations include encouraging creativity and competition, selection of groups, ways to effectively work in teams, tips for coaching, guidelines for self-critiques and peer evaluations, rubrics for grading, how to provide feedback, and demonstrating professional behavior and attire.Project-based learning encourages faculty to not only focus their efforts in the classroom on concept knowledge, but to expand opportunities for students to grow as professionals and for faculty to move from teacher to mentor.