Exploring Marketing Students’ Attitudes and Performance: A Comparison of Traditional and Intensive Delivery

Intensive mode delivery of a neuroanatomy unit: Lower final grades but higher student satisfaction

“…This is in contrast to surveys of institutions in the United States that showed 39% of respondents said that they shortened projects and cut the amount of material in the intensive mode (Scott and Conrad, ; Laves, ). Under these specific circumstances, we found that although the students were equally as satisfied with the course, a response in keeping with the research that shows students generally favor intensive mode courses (Scott and Conrad, ; Burton and Nesbit, ; Adria and Rose, ; Ellis and Sawyer, ; Ho and Polonsky, ; Laves, ), they did not do as well as the cohort that learned the material in the traditional mode. This would tend to concur with the view that time is needed to teach and learn especially material such as neuroanatomy that is content heavy, and cutting the timespan for delivery leads to superficial and inadequate learning of material (Davies, ).…”

“…The students responses to a questionnaire indicated that they felt intensive mode was similar or preferable to traditional mode. However, in this study, the overall marks did not differ between the two groups, and so although it was unclear if there was any improvement in learning outcomes, they did not find that the intensive mode students were worse off which was the result of our study (Ho and Polonsky, ).…”

“…Intensive mode courses have been available, in the summer months initially, since the mid to late 1800s in tertiary institutions, and have evolved to the flexible varied formats of today (Scott and Conrad, ; Ho and Polonsky, ; Laves, ). However, to this day there is much debate on the academic rigor and substance of these courses, which may even be characterized as “cram” sessions.…”

“…This is in spite of the research that has been done over time. Much of the research goes back as far as the 1960s, comparing various forms of intensive courses to traditional delivery, and has found that there was mostly no difference in the learning outcomes between these two modes of delivery, with some studies that found intensive courses were more favorable in certain disciplines (the biological sciences was not one of these) and a few studies that found traditional mode teaching was superior (Mims, ; Scott and Conrad, ; Van Scyoc and Gleason, ; Hutchinson and Martin, ; Lawrence and McPherson, ; Spurling, ; Burton and Nesbit, ; Davies, ; Randler et al, ; Ho and Polonsky, ; Laves, ; Ramsay, ).…”

“…Ho and Polonsky () conducted a study similar to our own, comparing a traditional mode and intensive mode delivery of an undergraduate marketing subject. The subject was taught by the same academic, the assessment was the same and the total time allocated to the intensive mode was not shorter than that for the traditional course.…”