Marketing Education Review

ISSN: 1052-8008 (Print) 2153-9987 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mmer20

Creating Student Engagement: The Kickstarter

Active Learning Project

Elliott Manzon

To cite this article: Elliott Manzon (2017): Creating Student Engagement: The Kickstarter Active
Learning Project, Marketing Education Review, DOI: 10.1080/10528008.2017.1304808

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10528008.2017.1304808

Published online: 25 Apr 2017.

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CREATING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT: THE KICKSTARTER ACTIVE LEARNING
PROJECT
Elliott Manzon
Department of Marketing, Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

Students can become disengaged from marketing material if they cannot see the direct application.
Marketing material needs to be applied to a meaningful business task to engage and motivate
students. This article introduces the Kickstarter Active Learning Project—an innovative semester-
long project in which students create a Kickstarter crowdfunding website. The key pedagogical
innovation is that student knowledge is applied immediately to the real-world task of creating a
Kickstarter website leading to increased engagement.

Students want to see their learning applied to meaningful
endeavors. Too often, students feel disconnected from
class material because it is hypothetical or not applied
(Auster & Wylie, 2006). Students become disengaged
when they cannot see the direct application of their
knowledge. According to a 2015 survey of college students,
79% of college students rate applying knowledge and skills
to real-world settings as important to their education (Hart
Research Associates, 2015). A major challenge for educa-
tors is to find real-world applications for students to apply
their knowledge in a setting which can still be easily
assessed and taught to students.
Students in my New Product Development marketing
course apply class concepts to a real-world challenge by
creating Kickstarter crowdfunding websites. The websites
that students create are used as an engaging medium for
students to immediately apply course concepts through
active learning. Students are more cognitively involved
when they create original content (Bloom, 1956), and
marketing students prefer learning activities that are simi-
lar to real business tasks and challenges (Karns, 2006).
Through Kickstarter websites, students use problem sol-
ving and creativity to apply course concepts to the real
world.
Bloom’s Taxonomy outlines how active learning cre-
ates higher levels of thinking in education (Anderson &
Krathwohl, 2001; Bloom, 1956). The highest level on the
revised taxonomy is called creating—putting elements
Address correspondence to Elliott Manzon, Department of
Marketing, Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of
Cincinnati, 424 Carl H. Lindner Hall, 2925 Campus Green Dr.,
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0145. E-mail: elliott.manzon@uc.edu
together to make an original product. Creating new con-
tent requires greater cognitive effort than do other types of
learning and leads to more engagement and improved
learning. Creating a website entails students using an ele-
vated level of thinking and engagement to apply market-
ing concepts to create the persuasive content of the
website. The project also requires students to analyze
their work and compare it to existing Kickstarter websites.
Evaluating is the second highest level in Bloom’s
Taxonomy and involves students creating further connec-
tions with the content by appraising the quality of their
work compared with successful websites from industry.
Active learning is a teaching strategy in which students
learn by applying knowledge and analyzing their work
(Bonwell & Eison, 1991). Active learning projects focus
on the highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Active learn-
ing marketing projects have been effectively applied to
marketing classrooms in a wide variety of forms including
students pitching their personal brand, interactive market-
ing games, and designing product packaging (Edmiston,
2016; Lee & Hoffman, 2016; Vander Schee, 2007).
Websites work well as a medium through which stu-
dents can create new content. Students tend to be engaged
by the use of new technology in their education (National
Survey of Student Engagement, 2013). Websites are a great
application tool because students can create the content
for the website immediately in the classroom.
IMPLEMENTATION
At the beginning of the semester, I introduce Kickstarter
to my students. Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website
through which entrepreneurs raise money to produce
their products by selling preorders to customers.

Marketing Education Review, vol. 00, no. 00 (2017), pp. 1–4.

Copyright Ó 2017 Society for Marketing Advances
ISSN: 1052–8008 (print) / ISSN 2153–9987 (online)
DOI: 10.1080/10528008.2017.1304808
2 Summer 2017
Kickstarter websites consist of pictures, videos, and text
describing the new product and persuading the customer
to place a preorder. Kickstarter is the world’s largest fund-
ing platform for creative projects (Kickstarter Stats, 2017).
More than US$2.8 billion has been raised through
Kickstarter websites to fund more than 119,000 projects
and businesses in the past 7 years.
Students in my class create an actual Kickstarter crowd-
funding website throughout the semester. The websites
are used to market new product concepts that student
invent, prototype, and analyze as a semester-long group
project. Students appreciate the real business application
when we analyze startup companies and entrepreneurs
who raised money through Kickstarter such as the Pebble
Smart Watch, which raised US$10 million through the
website. Students are excited from the first day of the
semester because they can see the real, impactful poten-
tial of the projects they will be completing.
Class concepts are applied directly to building the
websites throughout the semester. Students create their
Kickstarter websites during class time so that concepts are
applied in the moment. The websites become an inter-
active class project that grows and improves as more
content is learned. Each topic from class becomes very
real for students as they immediately use the knowledge I
teach during the class to improve their Kickstarter website
within minutes of learning the concept. This immediate
implementation has successfully improved the quality of
the websites, students’ feeling of ownership of their learn-
ing, and the level of classroom interaction.
PROJECT DETAILS
Class often starts with a 10-mi lesson on a concept.
Students then open their websites and spend the next
10 min using that new information to improve their
websites. The remainder of the class is then based around
analyzing what they did and expanding upon what they
learned in more depth. Research studies have demon-
strated that student attention declines after the first
10 min of lecture which leads to students only remem-
bering a small portion of the material presented (Gilboy,
Heinerichs, & Pazzaglia, 2015). The continuing change in
learning methods in the Kickstarter active learning imple-
mentation keeps student attention high. The time spent
in class analyzing and reflecting on the website elements
they just completed gives students the opportunity to
gain immediate insights that can help them further
their learning from the experience (Kolb, 1984).
Kickstarter websites designed by the students consists
of a video describing the project, picture advertisements,
and text describing why potential funders should fund
the product. Students are excited to use technology and
strongly prefer making a website over writing a paper.
Students are intrinsically motivated to make their
Kickstarter websites better because the project uses real-
world problem-solving skills applied immediately to a
real business task.
The project is applied over a series of lessons through-
out the semester with each lesson focusing on a new
aspect of the website. For example, my lessons on posi-
tioning start with me teaching the students how to tailor
a message that is relatable to a target audience. I go over
some examples of how this is done. Students then go
onto their own Kickstarter website and write a short para-
graph explaining their product in a way that their target
customer will relate to and appreciate. We then continue
the class with more depth and examples into the concept,
which allows the students to compare and evaluate
whether they were successful at implementing their
new learning about positioning.
This same approach is used for many lessons through-
out the semester. Lessons on branding are immediately
applied when the students create a recognizable and
memorable brand name and logo that they incorporate
into their website. Lessons about persuasion techniques
are applied to the rewards section of the website where
students create different reward levels for people who
fund their product. The concept of scarcity is taught to
students who then create an early-bird price discount
available only to their first 50 funders.
MEASURES OF EFFECTIVENESS
I have observed that student projects have become better
planned, better executed, and more professional since
the Kickstarter Active Learning Project was implemented.
A number of students have even continued to work on
their product after the semester ended.
I conducted a research study to measure the effective-
ness of using Kickstarter as a course project. Students who
completed the Kickstarter Project in the New Product
Development course voluntarily completed an anon-
ymous online survey after the semester ended (n = 78).
The survey asked students to list business classes they
completed that same semester with course projects. The
survey then asked students about their learning experi-
ences in each of those classes.

Table 1
Comparison of Kickstarter Project and Other Business Projects
Kickstarter project
M SD
1. I learned a great amount from this project. 6.32
2. I enjoyed this project. 6.12
3. The final project submitted was high quality. 6.17
Students rated that they learned more from the
Kickstarter project than they did in the other projects
that they completed that same semester (Table 1).
Students rated their learning from the Kickstarter project
an average of 6.32 on a 7-point scale and their learning
from other projects in the semester an average of 5.51 out
of 7 (p < .001).
Students also indicated that they enjoyed the
Kickstarter project significantly more than they
enjoyed other marketing projects they had that same
semester. Reporting on a 7-point scale, students rated
their level of enjoyment an average of 6.12 for the
Kickstarter project and an average of 4.85 for the
other projects they completed that same semester.
This is a statistically significant increase in enjoyment
(p < .001).
The results demonstrate that the Kickstarter project suc-
cessfully engages students in creating real, meaningful
learning experiences. The research shows that students
both enjoy their projects more and also feel that they
learn more from their projects—an ideal scenario for
educators.
Students have expressed a great appreciation for this
project and active learning through Kickstarter. Many stu-
dents have stated in their end of semester evaluations that
they feel proud of the project that they created and
enjoyed the unique experience of creating a Kickstarter
website.
ADAPTABILITY FOR OTHER MARKETING
COURSES
The Kickstarter Active Learning Project is easy to imple-
ment in a wide variety of marketing courses. The key
pedagogical innovation is that student knowledge is
applied immediately to the real-world task of creating a
Kickstarter website.
Marketing Education Review 3
Other business projects
M p
SD
0.74 5.51 <.001
1.57
0.932 4.85 1.97 <.001
0.69 5.94 1.11 .116
An introduction to marketing course might start off
by giving the students a product and then having the
students create the Kickstarter website for that product.
Students could learn the 4 Ps and the basics of marketing
while creating the pricing, promotion, and placement of
the product through their Kickstarter website over the
course of the semester.
A marketing strategy course may start with students
selecting an existing Kickstarter campaign for a product
on the market that has not been successful. Students
can then conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses
Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the brand to deter-
mine their strategic mistakes. These insights can be
used to reposition the product and create a new,
improved Kickstarter site for that product. Regardless
of the class, students want to be working with real-
world, hands-on projects so that they can see their
knowledge directly applied.
The Kickstarter Project is easy to implement with few
challenges. Creating the website is simple and intuitive
with an interface similar to that of Microsoft Word. No
HTML coding is required, and all text, videos, and
images can be easily formatted through the web inter-
face. There are also no costs associated with creating
the Kickstarter websites. Any student can quickly create
a Kickstarter profile for free and begin working on their
website.
For assessment purposes, students submit a preview
link for their Kickstarter website, which allows the
instructor to assess their work without the student hav-
ing to publicly launch their website. I assess the
Kickstarter websites on the basis of whether they suc-
cessfully implemented each of the concepts we covered
such as segmenting, positioning, use of marketing tech-
niques, and branding. The outcome is easy to asses
using a rubric similar to one used for grading written
reports.
4 Summer 2017
CONCLUSION
The Kickstarter Active Learning Project works to create
higher levels of student engagement because it focuses
students on in-depth thinking as they create new con-
tent and evaluate its quality. Bloom’s taxonomy sug-
gests that as students move beyond simpler forms of
education such as recalling facts, we should expect
greater engagement and learning. Students who are
engaged with their course content learn more, achieve
more and are more likely to continue their education
(Green, 2015; Russell-Bennett, Rundle-Thiele, & Kuhn,
2010).
Active, applied learning is important for student’s
career success. A recent survey of marketing practitioners
suggests an increased need for experiential learning to
increase critical thinking and analysis skills (Finch,
Nadeau, & O’Reilly, 2013). Students use these important
critical thinking and analysis skills as they use course
concepts to build and evaluate their Kickstarter websites.
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