Testing ERE Cycle in Teaching Business Communication Courses: Experiential Learning Strategies

Effective Communication Skills demonstrate the capacity and efficacy of any business graduate. These skills allow the business students to express and utilize their knowledge to benefit any organization. However, the business industry have continuously raised their concerns on the lack of effective oral and written communication skills to serve the requirements of rapidly growing communication within and outside organizations. Among many factors, teaching methods, at higher education, have been identified that did not allow developing working skills to their full effects. Therefore, many methods have been developed and tested around the world to increase the necessary skills among business students. Scholars and researchers have tried to explore and test Experiential Learning (EL) techniques in teaching different courses of business administration programs. In the past few decades EL techniques have frequently been used in business pedagogies. EL theory presents a playfield where learners can learn the best by doing (Kolb, 1984). The traditional teaching pedagogies have proved insufficient to cater the needs of the learners and corporate world. Although business education around the world has already inculcated EL strategies into its system; however, in Pakistan EL theory is at its initial stage and the trainers and teachers are striving to find out appropriate tools and strategies to effectively utilize the theory. In this regard, the researcher developed an ERE cycle which was based on Kolb’s (1984) EL theory and tested its impact on the grades of the students oral and written communication skills. The study was conducted using one sample t-test in the paradigm of quantitative research. Three classes of BBA and MBA were selected for this study who were studying Oral and written communication courses. This research compared mean scores of these three classes with the population mean of the last three years. The results showed a significant positive difference between the sample mean scores and population mean. The study proved that EL based ERE cycle could prove very effective in enhancement of the skills of business communication students that was reflected in their performance in exams. The study would provide communication faculty, trainers and institutes to explore and utilize the effectiveness of ERE cycle and perform further researches to extend the utilities of EL based teaching methods. Keywords: business communication, business administration, ERE cycle,experiential learning, higher educatio