The Sandwich Model Workshop - An Innovative Integrated Teaching Approach for Theory and Practice-Based Knowledge in Marketing

Abstract

This paper presents the Sandwich model workshop, a novel approach that strengthens the integrated pedagogy of theory and practice. Designed to provide academic and industry knowledge in an experiential and layered manner, the workshop is an effort to mitigate previously experienced challenges where simultaneous exposure to theory and practice was not possible. The workshop is based on a cooperation and consensus-driven effort between teachers of the 2-year master's programme in Innovation in a Swedish university and local company partners. The prominent output is that students have an improved opportunity to reflect on the interplay between theory and practice and realize overlapping areas and underlying gaps. This experiential learning also brings teachers closer to industrial perspectives and corporate partners to theorybased perspectives and possibly future employees. The Sandwich model workshop contributes to the ongoing research on creating novel and innovative tools for bridging the gap between education and industry, a highlighted challenge in higher education. The main contribution of the paper is the template of the Sandwich model that educators can use to complement their efforts for enhancing the impact of experiential learning for students at higher education institutions.

Analytics Capability in Marketing Education: A Practice-Informed Model

“…We have used a practitioner lens to develop a digital marketing analytics capability model for educators and have offered insights on how to integrate it in existing marketing curricula. This article contributes to emerging research on how business schools can better develop work-ready graduates and meet the needs of 21stcentury industry and students (Billore, 2021;Rohm et al, 2021). It also makes a theoretical contribution by providing definitional clarity to key analytics terms to help marketing researchers share a clearer understanding and increase coherence in the body of research.…”

“…Some have suggested curriculum improvements based on key knowledge and skills required by practitioners (Finch et al, 2013;Harrigan & Hulbert, 2011), while others have proposed to more fundamentally change how the subject is taught to better reflect real-world marketing trends (Rohm et al, 2019;Wymbs, 2011). Another solution is to integrate marketing practice through experiential and project-based learning (Billore, 2021;Rohm et al, 2021;Ye et al, 2017). Research methods to gather industry requirements are varied and include qualitative interviews and focus groups with practitioners (Harrigan & Hulbert, 2011;Royle & Laing, 2014), while quantitative approaches consist of surveys of practitioners (Finch et al, 2013) and text mining and content analysis of marketing job adverts (Liu & Burns, 2018;McArthur et al, 2017;Schlee & Harich, 2010;Schlee & Karns, 2017).…”

“…The majority of new marketing roles are now in digital marketing (Cowley et al, 2021) and the digital marketing skills gap remains a critical challenge for marketing educators with no end in sight (Spiller & Tuten, 2019). There is an increasing need for educators to take a more holistic approach where theory and practice are integrated (Billore, 2021) to ensure students are "future proof and real-world ready" (Rohm et al, 2021, p. 205). By taking an integrative view, we can better understand how educators can help students develop analytics capability to be employable in marketing roles now and in the future.…”

Facilitating Student Voice through Sandwich Principle of Teaching (SPoT): Research-Led Teaching in English Language Teaching (ELT)

“…SPoT has been applied in research and disciplines. Most of them concerned on the effectiveness on the use of SPoT in teaching (Billore, 2021;Bock et al, 2020;Kadmon et al, 2008;Wang et al, 2018). However, the use of SPoT in research-led teaching is still underresearched.…”