Rethinking experiential learning in marketing education

Experiential learning is “effective learning resulting from active student involvement with an experience and subsequent reflection on that experience” (Camarero, Rodriguez, & San José, 2010:84). Techniques of experiential learning have been extensively used and studied in the context of marketing education, and constitute one of the most thoroughly investigated topics in marketing education research (Gray, Peltier, & Schibrowsky, 2012). However, recent published work suggests that experiential approaches to teaching and learning in marketing may not be entirely unproblematic. Some researchers have suggested that the current cohort of undergraduate marketing students, reportedly used to a didactic and assessment-driven secondary school curriculum, may be resistant to experiential methods. Other researchers have observed that effective experiential learning requires deep engagement in the learning process by students, and that in the absence of such deep engagement it may be impossible to achieve the desired learning objectives. Consequently, the use of experiential methods as a default approach to marketing education, without careful consideration and integration of the underlying theories of experiential learning, could lead to a superficial learning experience. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the risks of this outcome, to alert marketing educators to the risks, and to suggest how these risks could be ameliorated. The paper begins with a summary of recent research into experiential learning in marketing education, from which certain reservations about the use of experiential methods are derived. It is proposed that these reservations may partly be explained by inadequate absorption of the underlying principles of experiential learning into the design of learning activities in marketing, so the subsequent section briefly addresses the origins and principles of experiential learning. The concluding section of the paper offers analysis and advice for marketing educators who are concerned to ground their experiential learning projects more soundly in educational theory.