The ability for students to work within a team environment has long been a skill set prized by most marketing educators and practitioners. What has not been altogether clear is how to best learn such skills. Some educators would argue that along with the “good,” there is truly some “bad” and “ugly” inherent in the framework many use to teach teamwork. The authors of this study focus on the use of group projects in the classroom. Results suggest that educators need to reexamine this issue to ensure that marketing students are developing both discipline-related and support skills.

Basic and discipline-specific technological competencies are needed by marketing and business school faculty, students, and their employers. Integration of basic technologies is common and easily accepted among younger students and readily supported, at least philosophically if not practically, by most business schools. Conversely, many marketing and business faculty face difficulties and problems with integration of new and discipline-specific technologies. The authors propose that these difficulties are most likely due to limited budgets and time, nonspecialized technical support, and lack of a formal process. This article presents the diffusion of innovations theory as a process for accomplishing a more formal integration of discipline-specific technologies into a marketing and business program. The use of “technology champions” is proposed as a means of enhancing the technology diffusion process.

Sooner or later, most marketing and business students realize that today’s job market is competitive, challenging, and requires substantial effort in order to pursue successfully. This article presents the authors’ observations, job market statistics, relevant academic literature, and survey results concerning the marketing and business student job search process. The research findings guide several recommendations for developing student self-marketing and job search skills, with the perspective of teaching students to apply what they have learned in their marketing courses.

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Some believe that the longer the face to face classroom meeting time, the more effective the learning experience. Others point out disadvantages of lengthier classes (e.g., student attention problems). The authors assess which of three class formats (i.e., 1 hour/three times a week, 1½ hours/twice a week, or 3 hours/one time a week) is optimal in terms of student (a) perspectives, (b) grades, and (c) evaluations of instructor performance. The authors observed that regardless of major, students prefer the twice a week class format, and marketing majors had the strongest preference for that format. All students believed the once a week format would result in lower levels of learning. Instructors teaching in the twice a week format received higher evaluations from students. And finally, there appears to be slightly better student grade performance in shorter classes, especially evident with marketing majors attending the twice a week format. C lassroom educators seek to provide students with the most effective learning experience. One aspect of this challenge revolves around how long students and their instructors meet face to face in the classroom for a given learning session. According to Brookfield (2003), conventional educational wisdom is that increased face-to-face time is necessary for learners to develop intellectual rigor and analytical depth. Teachers are said to need sufficient time to model the analytical behaviors they wish to encourage in learners. Extended contact time and a teacher's skilled help are also believed to be necessary so that learners are able to uncover dimensions and applications of ideas that would remain hidden in online or independent study environments. (p. 73) Despite this view, students do not have an unlimited attention span or an unlimited ability to process information. Therefore, as continuous face-to-face classroom time increases, a point of diminishing returns to learning is reached. Furthermore, almost all universities must treat total classroom time for a given course as a fixed and limited resource. Traditionally, a three-credit, semester-based course includes approximately 3 hours of classroom instruction per week. Given this constraint, how should these 3 hours be distributed weekly to optimize learning and meet the scheduling preferences of students?The purpose of this article is to assess which class length meeting is optimal in terms of the outcomes of student (a) perspectives, (b) grades, and (c) evaluations of instructor performance. Class formats of interest are (a) 1 hour/three times a week (hereafter labeled short format), (b) 1½ hours/two times a week (hereafter labeled moderate format), and (c) 3 hours/once a week (hereafter labeled intensive format). This article also examines whether there are differences in the learning outcomes between marketing majors and other business majors.