Barriers to Deep Learning in Student Marketing Teams

Co-operative teamwork among undergraduate and graduate students is increasingly common in marketing education. Research on this topic has been valuable in identifying problems that students experience, describing the ways that groups perform on various constructs of general interest and in recommending ways to help students overcome common team problems (see Batra et al. 1997). Yet, in order to further knowledge about the ways that students work in their groups, different questions should also be asked, and another research approach taken. We acknowledge that specialization, social loafing, and scheduling problems may all affect student performance and learning outcomes. Yet, one basic questions remains: what are the meanings of working in student teams? For example, how do students approach working in teams? What are their expectations? What do they really do while they are in the team, over the semester? How do they organize and perform their tasks? How do they feel about working in student teams? Critically, do students achieve a deeper understanding of course material from their engagement with team activity (see Marton et al. 1993, Ramsden 1992)?