Bring the Real-World Digital Marketing Experience to Classroom: Google Online Marketing Challenge

Experiential learning is a process of learning through experience and reflection. It is different from the traditional didactic learning, in which students read or are told about others' experiences of the subject. In many university classrooms, faculty members have incorporated hands-on projects to stimulate learning experience. However, experience doesn't always lead to experiential learning. A well-designed experiential learning can produce benefits such as 1) enhancing deep learning, 2) ensuring engagement, and 3) developing employable skills. The students who enrolled in an advanced e-Commerce course participated in the Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC), in which each team used $250 provided from Google on helping small business clients to promote their businesses. Incorporating the GOMC project in class produced the aforementioned benefits of experiential learning. The experiential learning activity seems to be a promising pedagogy to engage students and prepare them to be the future workforce of fashion marketing and branding in this Internet era.