Few metaphors have generated more objections than equating students to customers and education to a product. It faces challenges on multiple fronts. Tuition dollars do not buy grades or a degree. Education does not come with a money-back guarantee, and the customer is not always
Part of the lasting impact of the scholarship on teaching philosophies highlighted in my previous column results from the activities the authors (Beatty et al., 2009) developed to help faculty find their way to beliefs and a philosophy. The first, a guided imagery exercise, uses
Several discipline-based teaching journals now annually recognize articles that have had lasting impact. It’s a great way to honor pieces of scholarship that have advanced our understanding of important pedagogical issues and improved practice in the process. The Journal of Management Education recently honored two
We expect a lot of students as learners these days. Knowledge acquisition now means more than just receiving information. It involves students in actively constructing knowledge using what they know to make sense of the new content and its application. Learning at its best requires
Students must comply with lots of educational requirements. They take “required” general education and major courses. Sometimes the sequences of those courses is also mandated. In most courses students must submit required assignments on specified due dates. Policies mandate student actions, such as attendance, participation,
“Student learning is remarkably complex . . .” So begins the second sentence of a lengthy article proposing a research-based conceptual framework that identifies cognitive challenges to learning and how teachers can respond to them. The framework rests on three premises:
As Regan Gurung pointed out in his May 2020 article, teaching during the pandemic merits analysis. The fast transition to online instruction was terribly challenging and not to be repeated (we can only hope). And although learning how to respond during a pandemic is important,
There’s advice and there are activities that can help develop students’ abilities to offer constructive feedback and use the feedback they receive from peers to more accurately self-assess and improve their work. Those aren’t skills that college students today widely possess, but they’re skills that
Exemplars are “carefully chosen samples of student work which are used to illustrate dimensions of quality and clarify assessment expectations” (p. 1315). In addition to offering this definition, Carless and Chan (2017) provide a rationale for using them: “Unless students have a conception of what
In last week’s column I highlighted work that proposes ways of increasing the impact of the feedback teachers provide students. Doing so requires more feedback opportunities and activities—bottom line: more work for teachers. That got me thinking about how much of what I write in
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Few metaphors have generated more objections than equating students to customers and education to a product. It faces challenges on multiple fronts. Tuition dollars do not buy grades or a degree. Education does not come with a money-back guarantee, and the customer is not always right. Among faculty, the continued commercializing of education meets strong opposition and no small amount of emotion.
In light of that response, dare I propose that we look at teaching as selling? Some recent research (Rippé et al., 2020) explored the metaphor, although most certainly not for the first time. The authors cite Dewey, who in 1910 asserted that teaching and selling were “corresponding processes” (p. 285). What will never work for faculty is the idea of hawking their content wares before passersby at some entertainment event. We aspire “to teach scholars, not shoppers,” observed an author quoted in the article (p. 284). The premises that ground this research are more nuanced than might be expected. The authors see a “considerable overlap” between teaching and selling “when viewed from a communication perspective.” “To be clear, we are not suggesting that professors become salespersons, but they are frontline service providers with an opportunity to affect student success, motivation, and involvement” (p. 285).
Using seminal work in marketing that identifies seven steps in the sales process, the authors relate six of them to teaching, starting with the “preapproach,” during which the “salesperson formulates a strategy on the best way to connect with the prospect” (p. 286). The authors equate this step with teachers working to understand student needs and interests. They describe each of the six steps and illustrate them with concrete examples in a clear and well-organized table that appears in the article (pp. 287–8). Then the authors explore the effects of using this teaching-selling approach in two studies, one qualitative and the other quantitative. Here’s how they summarize their findings: “Selling-to-teach substantially increases the effect of instructor likability/concern, student interest, and learning performance on perceived learning. Students responded positively to the instructor who, like a good salesperson, paid attention to their concerns, motivated learning with an interesting presentation, and showed follow-up” (p. 296).
Offering a fresh perspective, the authors suggest that instructors respond to the consumer attitudes students bring to education with sales techniques. And they propose ways of selling that do not compromise the integrity of what or how we teach. Rather, the approach highlights the merit, value, and usefulness of our content. Some of what we ask students to learn isn’t immediately relevant, but education is about preparation for what’s to come. The problem is that students don’t arrive in our courses with any sense that they need to know what we’re teaching. Marketing has been enormously successful at persuading us to buy all sorts of things we never thought we needed. I didn’t think I needed a heated steering wheel, but now that my new car has one, I’m convinced of its necessity. To make the point directly, perhaps we could learn some things about selling that would enable us to better connect students to our content.
There’s another metaphor faculty frequently stumble over: teaching as performance. Most academics don’t see themselves as performers and assiduously avoid any behavior that hints at entertainment. The frequently stated objections raise questions about how performance may compromise the high standards of the educational enterprise. But in that metaphor as well lurks a kernel of truth. We stand or sit before students who see us, on screen or in class, in a very personal and physical way presenting what we have prepared. It smacks of performance, and like actors we can make it convincing and memorable.
Metaphors make comparisons. None of them fit perfectly. Business metaphors tend to rub educators the wrong way, but that doesn’t preclude our learning from them. Students in many of our courses don’t buy our content; they’re there to get credit. But they need what our courses contain, and maybe if we occasionally imagined selling as part of the job, we’d get more students signing up for those fine educational products that can change their lives.
Rippé, C. B., Weisfeld-Spolter, S., & Yurova, Y. (2020). Selling-to-teach: A didactical look at the natural integration between teaching and selling. Journal of Marketing Education, 42(3), 284–303. https://doi.org/10.1177/0273475320946828
