EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AS APPLIED AT TEXAS A&I UNIVERSITY-CORPUS CHRISTI IN ADVERTISING AND BUSINESS APPLICATIONS


Computer Simulation and Learning Theory, Volume 3, 1976 

 389 

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AS APPLIED AT TEXAS A&I UNIVERSITY-CORPUS CHRISTI IN 
ADVERTISING AND BUSINESS APPLICATIONS 

By: Leon F. Dube and L.M. Dyson, Texas A&I University at Corpus Christi 

 

Texas A&I University-Corpus Christi is committed to providing an innovative teaching 

environment. To pursue the objective of offering a meaningful and realistic learning experience for each 

student in the College of Business Administration, two courses are dedicated to the experiential learning 

concept. The purpose of each course is to provide the student with pragmatic business situations which 

require the use of classroom concepts in the business environment. 

The Experiential Business Application course is a core course which requires all business majors to 

be exposed to a real world problem solving situation. Advertising Theory and Practice is an elective 

course available to all majors in business administration as well as’ students from other colleges in the 

university. 

Texas A&I at Corpus Christi is unique in several respects. Partly because the university is only in its 

third year of existence, there is a more flexible and adaptable environment in which to develop course 

concepts while attempting to satisfy needs which exist In the student market. The student population is 

extremely heterogeneous and course content and concept must satisfy the variable student needs. 

Approximately 40% of the student body attends evening classes and almost every individual is a mature 

student with some work experience. A number of the day students are also mature students with work 

experience, however, many are similar to the more traditional college student with no experience and little 

maturity. Being an upper level university in which 100% 



Computer Simulation and Learning Theory, Volume 3, 1976 

 390 

of the students are transfer students, an additional problem is posed in that foundation. education is totally 

uncontrollable by the university itself. 

Given this university environment, the College of Business Administration faculty were challenged 

to develop and teach courses useful and meaningful to students with these divergent backgrounds, which 

serve the needs of evening and day students, which can be translated by the student to business reality, and 

which will further enhance the image of the university and stimulate future student population growth. 

In response to this challenge, two specific courses evolved which are dedicated to providing real 

world experiences for the students. The experiential learning course is supported by the entire faculty in 

providing actual problem situations from each discipline and by a faculty member with expertise in a 

given area reviewing student solutions when the course instructor requests assistance. Similarly, the 

advertising course is the result of efforts by the instructor to provide realistic and workable advertising 

problems for each student. 

The objectives, content, technique, and evaluation of the experiential learning experience at Texas 

A&I-Corpus Christi is presented in this paper. The experience the instructors have acquired in teaching 

these courses have done as much to broaden their teaching capability as it has to develop “experienced” 

business students.