Challenging first year marketing students using a tournament style competition

Courses that involve students in challenging, authentic tasks linking students to their peers and educators are associated with high levels of engagement. This paper presents a teaching innovation that was designed to promote student engagement. Currently in its third offering, the ‘Get Marketer Challenge’ is an authentic assessment task; requiring Introduction to Marketing student teams to solve a real-world marketing problem as part of a course-wide competition that is sponsored by industry partners. Educators continue to be surprised by the consistency and high level of effort expended by student teams. Students report the Get Marketer Challenge is an enjoyable assessment task that helped them to understand the many challenges faced by marketers. This innovation would be suitable for any marketing course that is offered where the student cohort has little work experience. The design accommodates a large number of students with a ‘knock-out’ style competition that reduces the number of teams.