The Curriculum-Faculty-Reinforcement Alignment and Its Effect on Learning Retention of Core Marketing Concepts of Marketing Capstone Students

Abstract

Curriculum-Faculty-Reinforcement (CFR) alignment is an alignment between fundamental marketing concepts that are integral to the mastery of knowledge expected of our marketing graduates, their perceived importance by the faculty, and their level of reinforcement throughout core marketing courses required to obtain a marketing degree. This research examines the learning effect of this alignment on Capstone students' long-term knowledge retention of concepts initially taught in a Principles of Marketing course. The results reveal that marketing concepts with high rather than moderate or low CFR alignment result in better long-term retention. We also conclude that an agreement among marketing faculty on the marketing concepts deemed important for graduates to master does not guarantee adequate reinforcement of such concepts in the classroom. Implications for how CFR alignment can be assessed and facilitate improvements in the marketing curriculum are discussed.