Developing Role Plays and Interactive Learning Exercises to Facilitate Experiential Learning in Graduate Level/MBA Marketing and Management Information Systems (MIS) Courses

Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: Leyland Pitt, Beedie School of Business

Project team: Adam Mills, Karen Robson and Emily Treen, research assistants

Timeframe: November 2015 to January 2017

Funding: $10,000

Courses addressed:

• BUS 702 – Marketing Management
• BUS 709 – Management Information Systems
• EMBA 638 – Marketing Strategy
• EMBA 737 – Marketing Management

Final report: View Leyland Pitt's final report (PDF)

Description: In SFU’s full-time MBA program there are two courses run in tandem: BUS 702 Marketing Management and BUS 709 Management Information Systems (MIS). In these two courses, while students complete separate lecture sessions and some in-class assignments, they also complete a common project across the two courses linking material from both. Then, the students complete a common case-based final exam, as well as oral examinations by the two instructors teaching the courses.

The intention is to run this TLDG project in two phases, first concentrating on BUS 702 and, having completed that, to extend it and exploit the learning gained into BUS 709. The first phase of the project calls for the identification and/or development of experiential learning activities to explore fundamental areas of marketing decision-making. These activities will then be implemented in the full-time MBA and Executive MBA marketing courses. The second phase of the project will extend the learning from the marketing course(s) into the area of MIS where experiential learning activities will be developed to explore fundamental areas of decision-making.

Questions addressed:

• What resources already exist for experiential learning in MIS/MBA courses?
• What resources need to be adapted or developed for experiential learning in MIS/MBA courses?
• What are students’ and instructors’ experiences with these activities?

Knowledge sharing: Marketing and MIS instructors, as well as PhD students, will be invited to assist in the focus group stages of the activity evaluation. On completion of the project, the activities, findings and experiences will be shared at a seminar for Faculty of Business teaching staff.

The findings and experiences also will be shared on the TLDG website, and the project leader will present the activities and the evaluation procedures used to a broader university community. The findings and the activities will be submitted as a journal article to academic conferences, such as the Academy of Marketing Science Annual Conference with Marketing/MIS Education tracks and to peer reviewed journals with a focus on education in these two disciplines.

Mills, A. J., & Treen, E. (2016). Operation valuation: Teaching pricing concepts in an experiential environment. Journal of Marketing Education, 38(2), 73–82. doi: 10.1177/0273475316649414

Pitt, L., Ferguson, S. L., & Robertson, J. (2017, November). Preparing the marketing PhD graduate for the academic job market: Insights from a small program. Paper presented at the 2017 meeting for the Society for Marketing Advances, November 7-11, 2017, Louisville, KY.

Keywords: experiential learning