Spring 2009 73 Marketing Education Review, Volume 19, Number 1 (Spring 2009). DENA HALE (Ph.D., Southern Illinois University Carbondale) is an assistant professor of Marketing at Georgia Southern University. Her research interests include Services Marketing, consumer self-efficacy, mature consumer decision making, age cohort comparisons, service innovation, and self-service technology. Dr. Hale has published a variety of proceedings related to her research interests in a number of conferences to include the Society for Marketing Advances, American Marketing Association, Frontiers in Services, and Marketing Science Institute INFORMS. Her work has also been published or is forthcom- ing in the International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, The Journal of Rural Health, Western Journal of Human Resources Management, and Journal of Services Marketing. Dena Hale can be reached at denahale@georgiasouthern.edu. LINDA GREEF MULLEN (Ph.D., Southern Illinois University Carbondale) is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Georgia South- ern University and one of the organizers of the school’s Sales and Sales Management Centers. She received her Ph.D. at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Dr. Mullen has worked over twenty-five years in the area of sales and sales management. Her research interests are ethics, specifically in the area of white-collar crime, sales and sales management and pedagogy issues. Linda Mullen can be reached at lgmullen@georgiasouthern.edu. DESIGNING PROCESS-ORIENTED GUIDED-INQUIRY ACTIVITIES: A NEW INNOVATION FOR MARKETING CLASSES Dena Hale and Linda Greef Mullen In this study, a student-centered learning style is introduced to the marketing discipline. Process Oriented-Guided Inquiry Learning, or POGIL, has been used extensively by the organic science courses schools across the nation. The POGIL technique is student-focused and engages the student aurally, visually, and tacitly, making it practical for all learning styles. Students become active, rather than passive learners. This innovative teaching method has reduced absenteeism, motivated students to be active learners, and increased student performance in our classes. This study is the first POGIL study to be conducted in marketing, or any other social science discipline. Introduction This study introduces the Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning method, or POGIL, as a new student- centered teaching style to the marketing discipline. POGIL was created under a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in order to develop peda- gogy and curriculum materials to help faculty move from lecturing to more student-centered teaching strate- gies (Hanson 2006). According to the NSF, traditional teaching methods in higher education were no longer meeting students’ needs; therefore, new educational and reform initiatives were introduced. Focus on chang- ing the curriculum and course content, utilization of computer based multimedia technology for instruction, and promoting more student involvement in class were some of the initiatives introduced by the NSF. Accord- ing to Hanson (2006), POGIL was the innovation which proved most effective in the science disciplines and is explained as follows: In a POGIL classroom students work in learning teams on specially designed activities that promote mastery of discipline content and the development of skills in the processes of learning, thinking, prob- lem solving, communication, teamwork, manage- ment, and assessment. The POGIL classroom envi- ronment is appropriate for faculty who want to en- gage students in learning and help students develop the skills they need to be successful in courses, col- lege, and careers. In this environment, students take on greater responsibility for their education; they learn to rely on thinking skills rather than memori- zation; they improve performance skills while learn- ing subject content; and they develop positive rela- tionships with other students and faculty (p. v). In a POGIL classroom, the student is guided by the professor rather than instructed. “In this sense, the instructor acts as a coach and has four roles to play: leader, monitor/assessor, facilitator, and evaluator” (Hanson 2006, p. 27). Background of Innovation Understanding the best learning methods with the best teaching practices has evolved from teacher-centered to student-centered. In the later, we find an evolution from lecture, to case study, to discovery learning to experien- tial learning, then to problem-based and inquiry learn- ing, and finally to constructivist instructional techniques (Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark 2006). All of these teaching techniques require the student to learn with little or no guidance from the instructor. The foundational concepts of such learning techniques ride on the assumption that (i) students’ learning experience is more effective when they must construct their own solutions and (ii) using real-world experience, or the procedures of the discipline, is the best way to understand the discipline. Extensive