All course stories
Dr. Lisa Troy
MKTG 409 · Mays Business School, Texas A&M

How MKTG 409 scaled hands-on marketing practice for 800+ students

800+
students per semester
92%
Average completion rate
3 → 8
simulations expanded
~90%
cohort achieved career-readiness benchmarks in 5 simulations
Spring 2024+
continuous use
BACKGROUND

Traditional assignments couldn't keep up with 800+ students

Dr. Lisa Troy teaches MKTG 409 at Texas A&M's Mays Business School, with large sections reaching 800+ students per semester. She wanted students to move beyond written assignments into hands-on marketing practice — without an impossible grading burden.

MKTG 409 needed assignments that could be:

Hands-on, like real marketing work Aligned to what students learned in class Personalized enough to help each student Consistent enough to grade at scale Reviewable enough for the professor to trust Practical across a very large cohort
The challenge

The problem was not just grading. It was knowing who was really learning.

In a course with more than 800 students, Dr. Troy wanted students to practice marketing the way it happens in the real world: analyzing a market, making a recommendation, responding to feedback, and defending a decision.

Students could submit polished written responses, but those did not always show how they reasoned, how they used evidence, or whether they could apply the concept in a realistic situation. And at this scale, giving every student rich, personalized feedback manually was not realistic.

Before Cartedo
Traditional marketing assignment

Students submitted written responses about segmentation, positioning, campaigns, or launch strategy.

Hard to see
Are they applying the concept?
Is the recommendation backed by evidence?
Do they understand the tradeoffs?
Can they respond to realistic stakeholder feedback?
Can they improve the work after feedback?
Can they defend the recommendation under questioning?
The shift

From written assignments to hands-on marketing practice

Instead of writing about a concept in isolation, students were placed into realistic scenarios — reviewing information, making decisions, explaining recommendations, receiving feedback, and improving their work.

Students weren't waiting until the end of an assignment to discover what they missed. They received feedback while still inside the learning experience — making personalized feedback possible at a scale no professor could manually deliver.

The learning loop
1
Decide

Students make a marketing recommendation.

2
Get feedback

Cartedo gives targeted, rubric-aligned feedback.

3
Revise

Students improve their response.

4
Defend

Students answer stakeholder questions.

5
Improve

Students build stronger reasoning across sims.

Simulation examples

From marketing lessons to real-world decisions

A few of the featured simulations Dr. Troy created and used across MKTG 409 — each putting students into a realistic marketing role.

Segmentation
Recommend a Target Segment

Students reviewed customer data and defended a segment choice.

Positioning
Reposition a Struggling Brand

Students diagnosed a positioning gap and pitched a fix to stakeholders.

Go-to-market
Launch a New Product Line

Students built a launch plan and justified budget tradeoffs.

Marketing strategy
Respond to a Campaign Problem

Students analyzed weak campaign performance and recommended a new direction.

AI-era marketing
Use AI to Improve a Recommendation

Co-create with TedoGPT, critique it, defend the final call.

Revision practice
Improve a Recommendation After Feedback

Students received targeted feedback, revised, and improved before moving on.

Ready-to-use simulations by Dr. Lisa Troy you can add to your course. Explore simulations
The outcome

Personalized feedback became possible in an 800+ student course

Cartedo gave students feedback that was specific to their work, aligned to the course rubric, and delivered during the learning process. Dr. Troy could review grading rationale and cohort-level patterns instead of manually grading every interaction from scratch.

The course achieved 92% completion rates and expanded from 3 simulations to as many as 8 per semester. Semester after semester, students reached desired career-readiness benchmarks within 5 simulations.

More feedback, more often — without reviewing every submission manually.
What students noticed

Anonymized student reflection themes from MKTG 409.

"It felt less like homework and more like something I'd actually do in a marketing job."

MKTG 409 reflection

"The feedback helped because I could see what was missing before I moved on."

MKTG 409 reflection

"I had to actually make a decision instead of just explaining the definition."

MKTG 409 reflection

"The simulation made me think through why my recommendation made sense."

MKTG 409 reflection
The takeaway

Students weren't just writing about marketing.
They were doing it.

MKTG 409 used Cartedo to turn traditional marketing assignments into repeated, hands-on practice. Students made decisions, received feedback, revised their thinking, and defended recommendations — at a scale where personalized feedback would otherwise be impossible to deliver manually. That was the first breakthrough: experiential learning became practical in an 800+ student course.

But then the classroom changed again.

By Spring 2025, written submissions were becoming more polished. Scores were rising. Students could use AI to generate cleaner responses faster than before. For a professor, that created a new question:

Were students actually learning, or submitting AI-polished work?

Dr. Troy did not want to ban AI. In real marketing jobs, students will use AI to brainstorm, draft, compare options, and refine ideas. The real question became whether students could use AI and still think for themselves. 

Continue to Part 2
How MKTG 409 made AI use assessable, not invisible
Disclaimer: Independent course-use example

This Cartedo-authored story is a factual example of course use—not a testimonial or endorsement. The featured instructor and institution did not write, review, approve, or sponsor it, and no affiliation or recommendation should be inferred.

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