Blended Learning in Marketing Education: Using Alumni Experiences to Increase Student Motivation

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, both teachers and students underwent significant adaptation and flexibility in higher education courses. The literature documenting these experiences has grown extensively, with educators highlighting challenges and opportunities in distance learning formats. These reports are crucial to understanding how forced adaptations resulted in more productive activities for students than we had thought of before. These experiences also hold fundamental importance for deriving insights for the future, serving as valuable lessons for colleagues to draw inspiration from and apply them to their disciplines. This article describes an experience developed in an introductory Marketing subject that, due to university directives, adopted a blended learning regime during COVID-19. What started as a problem turned into an opportunity. An alumni engagement activity was devised to enhance student motivation — an undertaking that would have been challenging in an exclusively classroom-based setting. This activity became essential, elevating student motivation, promoting new experiences, facilitating networking, and encouraging collaborative work.