Glenn Pearce

Viva Voce (Oral Examination) as an Assessment Method Insights From Marketing Students

Viva voce (viva) or oral examinations are widely used in medical education, clinical examinations, and doctoral defenses, yet the assessment method is seldom adopted by university marketing departments. Correspondingly, the marketing education literature makes no reference to vivas as an alternative academic assessment technique. This research discusses the use of viva as a summative assessment method in university marketing education. Final-year marketing students undertaking an elective unit in services marketing were given an end-of-unit viva instead of a written examination. Fifty-four cartoon completion tests were analyzed to gain insight into student perceptions of the viva assessment task. Interpretive findings from this study suggest that viva is a valid and novel method of assessing learning outcomes such as application of deep learning, application of theory to practice, and problem-solving skills. The vivas enabled dialectic communication between the examiner and student and provided invaluable experience for career interviews. Although some students were anxious prior to the viva examination, on reflection they conceded that the process was user friendly. Based on these findings, implications for the adoption of vivas as an assessment method are discussed.

Building friendships and relationships: The role of conversation in hairdressing service encounters

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of conversation as an element of interaction that occurs in a hairdressing service encounter with the aim of seeking to understand variations in conversation between “short” and “long‐term” clients; how conversation contributes to the development of “commercial friendships”; and how relationships develop through conversation.Design/methodology/approach – Quota sampling is used to select eight hairdressing service encounters in one Australian salon for recording and subsequent interviews with clients. Quotas address gender and duration of continued patronage. Conversations and interviews were analysed thematically and using conversation analysis.Findings – The progress and evolution of conversations varied between short and long‐term customers; topics also varied by this classification as well as gender. Conversation played an important function with respect to building friendship with the service provider; conversation also assisted in the...

Today's educational drama – planning for tomorrow's marketers

Purpose – To describe and discuss the use of educational drama in marketing education, including its relative advantages to both learners and trainers.Design/methodology/approach – The paper involves exploratory qualitative research, using sentence completion and reflective diaries. The approach was to probe in an open‐ended way what students believed they had learnt and gained from the drama, and why; how did the drama affect them; how did they view marketing after the drama; and how did they compare the educational drama to traditional “chalk and talk” classes.Findings – The interpretive qualitative results of the study indicated a very high student acceptance of drama as an educational experience, a widely held view that even though it was drama it had actually enhanced the realism of the learning experience, a greater appreciation of the array and complexity of the various roles in the marketing environment and the alternative perpectives possible, an expressed enhancement of their sense of empathy th...

Indoor adventure training: a dramaturgical approach to management development

Adventure training (AT) as a movement has its origins in outdoor‐based experiential programs such as “outward bound”. Recently, educators have questioned the educational value of the “outdoor” component of AT and there is an opinion that it is the novelty of the setting/activities and the provision of psychological (rather than physical) risk that are its key elements. With this in mind, indoor adventure training (IAT) offers new possibilities for management training and development. Indoor‐based experiential education removes uncontrollable outdoor factors such as climate, danger, emotional distress and the need for physical abilities. These outdoor factors can be replaced by educational drama elements that encourage engagement, fantasy and meaning through theatre form. In this paper the theoretical development of IAT is discussed and an outline is given of a revolutionary IAT approach that immerses participants in a themed dramatic experience with the purpose of developing such things as learning about teamwork, problem solving and communication skills.

Experiencing the Product Life Cycle Management Highs and Lows Through Dramatic Simulation

Product life cycle (PLC) stages and diagrams are briefly and dispassionately covered in the standard marketing textbook format with little attention to the social-psychological experiences of those actually participating. This qualitative study used process drama as a teaching tool and a research instrument to probe the PLC phenomenon in a different way. A useable sample of 27 students used the educational drama convention called Space Mission to Mars, a form of process drama, to bring first-hand contact with, and relevance to, this marketing concept and practice. Student journals were analysed through content analysis, and this was combined with lecturer observations and some semistructured probe interviewing. The study found that students clearly expressed a new, more involved, and more insightful appreciation of the actual conceptual marketing processes and emotional experiences that marketers have when directly involved in PLC activities.

Teaching undergraduate marketing students using 'hot seating through puppetry' : an exploratory study

Changes in preferred methods of learning among many students in recent years have challenged educators to introduce more interactive and experiential teaching methods. ‘Hot seating’ – where a person, such as an invited subject expert is interviewed by an audience – is a well-established interactive method of learning, but is often limited by availability of willing and suitable interviewees. In this exploratory study, university business undergraduates were required to interact with a lecturer-operated puppet representing a corporate client interviewee in a simulated sales presentation. Reflective diaries were used to gain insights into students’ perceptions of this teaching technique. Results suggest that students: (i) gained practical business skills; (ii) were exposed to commercial responsibilities and (iii) assimilated relevant academic theory. Benefits and limitations of ‘hot seating through puppetry’ and its possible contribution to teaching and learning in a variety of contexts are discussed, together with suggestions for further research.