Abstract:

Creativity is an indispensable component of any successful marketing campaign development that demands constant value-added innovation. Unfortunately, higher institutions of learning have not been successful in shifting the focus of theoretical knowledge to the practical application which has become a more important aspect of learning. This is vital for the growth and nurturing of the next generation of marketers to embrace technological advancements (e.g. AI) in the workforce.

Albeit, there is a fundamental restriction that comes with teaching difficulties, whereby lecturers face the continuous dilemma of delivering a generic syllabus against the need to consider the individual characteristics of students. As with the new generation of students today, who have access to massive amounts of information, students need to master the thinking process skill that will foster their development of psychological constructs and the mental steps of the creative process which ultimately allows them to produce a higher level of creative output.

This study aims to overcome these challenges in the context of a level 4 Marketing Principles module for first-year marketing undergraduates. This study proposes a new teaching framework that incorporates David Pace’s (2021) seven-step Decoding the Discipline (shall be known as DD henceforth) paradigm which incorporates multiple creativity theories and models (including prominently, Titus’ (2007) Creative Marketing Breakthrough Model).

The study was conducted in several tutorial classes across 4 consecutive weeks within the semester whereby each class emphasised different aspects of DD which includes identifying the bottlenecks, scaffolding the mental tasks, modelling prototypes, providing continuous opportunities for practice and feedback, nurturing motivation to develop innovative product ideas and communicate the marketing ideas. This process of engagement allowed students to experience an authentic assessment that promotes their creativity in a well-designed classwork which showcases the students’ enhanced understanding and application of the marketing domain knowledge.

Survey data was gathered from the students at 2 stages; namely before the start of the 4 weeks of activity (pre) and after (post). The results indicated that students’ perceived creative skills and confidence levels were significantly enhanced following the comparison before and after the experiment. It is conceivable that the pedagogic paradigm of DD can be further applied to decode creativity across other disciplines beyond marketing subjects. This is an important finding that needs to be further studied as many syllabi within the current education systems (especially in higher education) puts too much emphasis on traditional theoretical knowledge rather than actual empowerment of the capabilities of the individual thinking process.

In line with the UN Sustainable Development Goal of Quality Education (Goal No. 4) and Reduced Inequalities (Goal No. 10), we need to recognize that an elaborate paradigm shift in the education system is long overdue.

Keywords:

Creativity, Sustainable Education, Decoding, Skill, Authentic.