Abstract:

Creativity is becoming a crucial keystone of business. Now, more than ever, it is a demanded skill for many business professionals, including the ones in the marketing field. Nonetheless, the education sector has been systematically criticized for its failure in effectively nurturing creative skills. Furthermore, there is a very limited number of studies on how to improve the students’ learning experience through the application of creative teaching methods. This study tackles this gap. The purpose of this research is to understand how marketing higher education institutions can improve students’ learning experience, by using creative teaching methods.

The teaching method has not only a direct influence on the students’ learning experience, but its application process is also relevant. Consequently, it becomes important to, not only understand which creative teaching methods are applied and how they are applied in marketing courses, their influence on the learning experience of students, as well as the innovation of the application of the creative teaching methods.

The research strategy builds on an exploratory single case study, to get an in-depth analysis of the participant’s experiences. The criteria used to choose this case study were related to the fact that it is the market share leading and oldest marketing higher education institution in Portugal, offers diverse graduate and under-graduated courses, and its pedagogical concept is based on the learning by doing. Data were collected through document analysis, and eleven interviews with marketing higher education students.

In overall terms, this study shows how the student's learning experience can be improved by integrating diverse creative teaching methods in the class, diversifying their application for students to become observers, visitors, and experimenters, and by suiting and contextualizing the creative teaching methods applied, as well as creating new challenges. This paper thus provides detailed insights on how to improve the learning experience of students, additionally offering a set of avenues for future research.

Keywords:

Creative teaching methods, creativity, learning experience, higher education, marketing courses.