Achieving Relevance In Assessment Through Fieldtrips

Abstract

Students often bemoan the fact that they can’t see the relevance of the report they are asked to write or the case study they have to analyze. This paper introduces the use of attending an industry tradeshow as a means of making assessment more interesting and meaningful. Much has been written about the need to bring reality back to management education and many institutions worldwide have attempted to do this through fieldtrips, simulations and case studies. This paper explains how relevance and reality can be achieved in a simple and cost effective way. Essentially postgraduate marketing students are given an assessment task which requires them to attend an industry tradeshow. Following the tradeshow they write a marketing plan and make a presentation for a company in a business-to-business marketing context. The implementation of this approach and its effect on assessment and learning outcomes is presented in this paper. Feedback from students on their experiences of the assessment task and its impact on their learning is also presented.