Deep learning approach among marketing students: Adult versus youth learners

Abstract: Application of marketing concepts is paramount for marketing graduates, as they will assume intellectually demanding positions in the industry. They are expected to demonstrate “metacognitive ” and other critical skills cultivated from deep approaches to learning. Marketing graduates are not only limited to youth learners, but also adult learners, who typically bring a great deal of background experiences to any new learning environment. Adult learners approach learning differently than younger learners. Hence, the purpose of this research is to make a comparison of learning approaches adopted by youth and adult learners in studying marketing unit and also to investigate the impact of teaching strategies towards the students ’ learning approach. Data was collected by administering the Student Process Questionnaire (SPQ) developed by Biggs (1987). The relatively higher scores for the deep and achieving approaches to learning compared to the surface learning approaches for both youth and adult learners indicated that they used the deep learning approach to obtain the highest grades and to be model students. Besides, this study suggested that marketing educators, through changes in the teaching strategies, can influence the learning approaches adopted by the marketing students towards the desired deep and achieving learning approaches