Managing the New University Student Experience in Marketing Education

Abstract

This paper reports on two processes used with one first year cohort, with the aim of enhancing the teaching-learning partnership. Managing the new university experience by obtaining meaningful feedback from students, acting to address student needs, and giving students early feedback on writing provide the impetus for this study. The researchers ‘broadened the boundaries’ in student-lecturer interactions by two means. The first was to use a recently developed instrument to understand student expectations at the start of a semester-based first year business core course. The second process was to provide pre-submission feedback for the first essay. The qualitative data showed how students perceived their ways of learning, their potential contributions to small groups, and that appropriate student contributions to lectures, tutorials and assignments are important to the learning process. The study also investigates the effectiveness of providing structured feedback about draft assessment to students before the submission of their first university assignment, showing that a statistically significant improvement in assessment marks results from allowing students to submit a draft of their first university assignment, provided that they receive constructive feedback. Together, these processes contribute to broadening the boundaries for effective teaching and learning.