BUSINESS REPORT

Gianni Pennewaert, Andreas De Vroe, Nando Saccasyn & Jens Dumonsau

Business English 2B
Inge Verheyden

2017-2018
01-03-2018
Executive summary
We wrote a report because we liked to find out how students perceived the way of teaching in
Marketing at Artevelde University College. We wanted to know if they preferred a more business
orientated kind of teaching or are happy with the way things are right now.

To get the right information to write the report we made a survey that was filled in by all of our fellow
students so we know exactly what they taught on the matter. We had 40 reactions on this survey and
it gave us lots of information.

It was clear to us our fellow students were happy with their choice to start studying Marketing. We
couldn’t really find out if they really liked the way of teaching but we saw a positive view not really
outspoken but it tended to be rather positive. It was quickly clear that our students liked a business
orientated way of teaching. They want to know what’s hot in the field of marketing. A clear link to the
real business world was being appreciated and made students like the courses more. Good examples
of lessons students liked for this was integrated marketing and consumer marketing. Consumer
marketing even introduced a new way of giving class and was being liked by most of the students and
they liked to see this return in other courses. But even when students like business oriented tasks and
it was clear they saw the importance of these they don’t want more. Work pressure is already high so
it shouldn’t be higher.

Therefore we recommend to make courses really business orientated and have a clear link with work
life. If students see a link they often like the course more and feel like it is more important. We
suggest using the way of teaching in consumer marketing in more courses, but we understand this
isn’t possible for every class but where possible it would be beneficial to make this return.

2
1. Inhoud

1. Introduction 1
2. Are you happy with the fact you chose marketing this year? 2
3. How satisfied are you with the way of teaching in general in marketing at Artevelde (this year) 2
4. Were you satisfied with the way Consumer Marketing was taught this year? 3
5. Would you like other languages besides English and French and which? 4
6. How could the teachers improve the courses which are not attended by a lot of students, so they
become more interesting 5
7. Do you prefer classes with or without interaction between the teacher and students? 5
8. Do you think the tasks will increase your skills for your future life and job? 6
9. Which kind of tasks do you think are good and useful and which kind of tasks do you think are
useless and have to be removed 7
10. Which kind of tasks do you think are useless and have to be removed 9
11. Would you like more tasks that are realistic and applicable on the business world like
Consumer Marketing? 10
12. Which of these classes are not really useful? 11
13. Would you prefer more learning trips within the academic year? 11
14. If you answered yes, where would you like to go? 12
15. Conclusion 13
16. References 14
17. Appendices 16

3
1. Introduction
Business Management Marketing at Artevelde is a well-known study in Ghent. Throughout the years
it has been improved to the study it is today. But like everything improvement is always possible and
that’s why in this report we looked to find out how we could improve this studies even more. We did
research at how students perceived the courses and the different ways of teaching at Artevelde.

The first part of the findings will tell you more about the level of satisfaction with the courses and the
choice for Marketing. Then we’ll go on and explain how courses could be improved and how these
are perceived. The final part is about the usefulness of tasks and obligated lessons.

We’ll end the report with some conclusions and recommendations to improve the courses based on
our survey.
2. Are you happy with the fact you chose
marketing this year?
The first question we asked in our survey was if the students were happy with their choice to study
marketing this year.

And these were the results:

1 stands for not happy with the choice and 5 for very happy. Most of the students are happy with

their choice but not completely but that is very normal because there will always be something that
you don’t like about what you study.

But there are certain students who are perfectly happy with their choice.

There are also 10 students who are neutral, but nobody who is rather unhappy so that is a good thing
of course
3. How satisfied are you with the way of
teaching in general in marketing at Artevelde
(this year)
We also asked if the students are happy with the way of teaching in marketing at Artevelde.

The results were as followed:

Most of the students are neutral about this question. We think that is due the question is about all
the courses in marketing and so they like the way of teaching of some courses and from others they
don’t like it.

There are also quite a lot of people who like the way of teaching but also some who don’t really like
it.

We think that the people who don’t really like the way of teaching are also the ones who were
neutral in the first question

4. Were you satisfied with the way Consumer

Marketing was taught this year?
To get a more specific answer about one of the courses, we asked if they liked the way that consumer
marketing was taught.

Our teacher gave us all of the PowerPoint files and she put spoken messages in every slide to explain
what was on them like she would explain it in class.

The difference was that she never looked at the theory in class but we needed to teach it our self and
in class we got time to work on our group task, in which we must use the theory. For all of us, this
was a totally different way of teaching, so we asked if they liked it.

Almost everybody liked it. We gave some different possibilities to answer but we can conclude that

almost all of the students like this way of teaching and maybe it should be used by other teachers for
other courses as well.
5. Would you like other languages besides
English and French and which?
Another question of us was if they would like other languages besides English and French.

This shows clearly that the most of them are good with just English and French but there are also a
good amount of students who would like other languages as well.

That leads to our next question: which language(s) would you like to be taught as well?

We gave them some different options to choose.

It is pretty clear that the most of the students who want another languages would like to have
Spanish.

German and Italian are a bit less popular but still some students voted for them.

We also added Chinese because we thought that it is very useful language these days and surely in
the business world but our classmates thought otherwise. Only 1 student voted for Chinese.

We expected that German would be the most chosen one because it is also a very important
language in Belgium but we got other results.
6. How could the teachers improve the courses
which are not attended by a lot of students,
so they become more interesting

Most of the students would like to get more links with the daily life during the lessons. They would
like to get the subject matter into life. Besides this a lot of students also think that attending classes
can be motivated by making the conversation between students and teacher less formal. Also, some
of the students agree that the classes should get some more variety. A minority of the students think
that teachers take their subject too seriously.

7. Do you prefer classes with or without

interaction between the teacher and students?

If we ask the students rather they prefer interaction between the teacher or not, almost all students
prefer a mix of both. If the students had to pick with or without interaction there is a slight difference
leaning towards the classes without interaction. This depends on the students’ characteristics, if the
person is shy he will rather prefer classes without interaction. Although in general three quarters
would still go for the mix of both styles.

Almost three quarters of the students think that the lessons we are being given are a good
preparation for our future life and job. The others think that the lessons do not satisfy, some of them
think that the lessons together with the given tasks do satisfy. But one fourth of the students thinks
that even with the tasks and lessons we get we are not prepared for our future life and job.
So to conclude we can say that Artevelde students think they get a good chance on the business
market after graduating.

8. Do you think the tasks will increase your

skills for your future life and job?

The conclusion here is that students think that the tasks are really useful for our skills in the future.

We asked this question because we often ask ourselves while we make a task what the purpose is. Or
what the impact will be for our future. We as a group had the opinion that some tasks are really
useless. For example, we get tasks in TMD about all sorts of stuff. This year they are about planning,
reading a book, reflecting. We think that they are useless. We do not think that they would increase
our skills.

Because more than 50 percent of the students have the opinion that it will increase our skills, we do
not think that there is room for improvement.

9. Which kind of tasks do you think are good

and useful and which kind of tasks do you
think are useless and have to be removed
Here we see that most of the students prefer to use their creativity like in the course of consumer
marketing (10) or integrated marketing (4). What stands out is that they are both group tasks.

So, this question we asked because we wanted to know with tasks are useful and which are not. The
reason? It is a bit same as the on from the last question. We often say that some question are really
useful, that we actually learn something but with other tasks we totally do not get that impression.
10. Which kind of tasks do you think are
useless and have to be removed
The students do not like the tasks that have to do with the language courses like PoPP and the
portfolios.

The problems is that we do not get the feeling that these tasks will learn us something. For example,
the PoPP and Portfolio we latterly have to copy presentations in the document.

Also, for the PoPP it is most of the time difficult to write down the feedback because we stand there
and can’t write it down or sometimes even do not get feedback.

11. Would you like more tasks that are

realistic and applicable on the business
world like Consumer Marketing?

Most of the
students
would like
more tasks
that are more
realistic. We
actually
already saw
this in the
question
about the
tasks that are
useful

We asked this
question
because often
do not know
what we
could do with
that kind of
knowledge.
For example,
in consumer
marketing we
got real life examples and we understood what we could do in the future with this knowledge. But
then for business marketing we did not. Another reason is because we had a feeling that the students
would answer that the assignment of the language courses are useless. It is because we do not have
real life examples.
12. Which of these classes are not really
useful?

Even if the tasks of the language courses are useless the students still think that the lessons are
useful. They rather have a language than Talent & Management Development or RZL.

In our group we had all the same opinion about the lessons of RZL. It is boring we just sit in these
classes, listening and doing nothing. We rather not go and do something useful. The same with Talent
& Management Development. So, we thought we are going to ask this question. We just do not learn
something from just listening. We chose marketing do to something and use our creativity.

13. Would you prefer more learning trips within

the academic year?

The majority of the students want to go on learning trips. But 58,1 percent think it is not necessary. It
would just be nice.
14. If you answered yes, where would you like
to go?
15. Conclusion
We saw opinions tend to be different from student to student but we can conclude students tend to
be happy with the choice they made when they chose to start studying Marketing. They tend to be
positive about how lessons are being taught but there is more of a neutral view on this topic. What is
a surprise for us is that the special way consumer was given was something that gave a lot of work
pressure but students preferred this new way.

We see a clear trend that students like real life problems and tasks focused on real stuff. Portfolio’s
and lessons that don’t give a clear meaning to future work life are ‘t welcomed that much. But of
course student don’t really want more tasks they think work pressure is already high and they don’t
want it higher.
16. References
17. Appendices

Survey of teaching at Artevelde

What can be improved in the courses at Artevelde?

How satisfied are you with the way of teaching in general at

Artevelde (this year) *
Would you like other languages besides English and French *

If you answered yes, which language(s)?

How could the teachers improve the courses which are not
attended by a lot of students, so they become more interesting? *

Do you prefer classes with or without interaction between the

teacher and the students? *

Do you think these courses are a good preparation for your future
life and job? *

Do you think the tasks will increase your skills for your future life
and job? *

Which kind of tasks do you think are good and useful?

Which kind of tasks do you think are useless and should be

removed?

Would you like more tasks that are realistic and applicable on the
business world? *

Do you think the obligated lessons are useful? *

Would you prefer more learning trips within the academic year? *
.
If you answered yes, where would you like to go?