APRIL 2000JOURNAL OF MARKETING EDUCATION Integrating Marketing Courses to Enhance Team-Based Experiential Learning

Many recent studies suggest that undergraduate education needs to be more effective. Accordingly, individuals involved in higher education continue to search for ways to improve student learning. This article describes a team-based experi-ential learning project that integrates three marketing courses: principles of marketing, principles of selling, and sales management. Working in teams, students in the princi-ples of marketing course develop new product concepts and create corresponding marketing promotional materials for use in a mock trade show. Students from the personal selling and sales management courses, also working in teams, attend the trade show to identify and select products they wish to use to complete a sales call exercise. This project provides stu-dents an opportunity to work in teams and combine their efforts with teams from other courses to successfully com-plete their respective experiential exercises. The article includes students ’ reactions to the project and steps for implementation. In an effort to ascertain the most effective methods for learn-ing, universities across the country are experimenting with a variety of innovative techniques. While scholars may differ in their opinions of which methods are most effective, most agree that the traditional lecture format is not the most effec-tive method for today’s classroom. In an article that focuses on the shift from teaching to learning, Guskin (1994) suggests that “the primary learning environment for undergraduate students, the fairly passive lecture-discussion format where faculty talk and most students listen, is contrary to almost every principle of optimal settings for student learning” (p. 20). While it is noted that lectures have a place in the learn-ing environment, it is clear that lectures alone are not the most effective pedagogy for universities. The importance of using cooperative experiential learning projects has received a sig-nificant amount of attention in the marketing education litera