Course Design Considerations in International Business Education

Abstract

Designing courses to teach international business is a very complex multidisciplinary task. Cross-border and international business has to deal with all of the issues and functions (such as accounting, finance, management, and marketing) that are faced by a domestic business along with the complexities of operating across borders. Business globalization is amultidimensional balance between the costs and benefits of going across borders. The costs of foreignness have many dimensions—costs due to differences in cultures, levels of social trust, languages, religions, economic and market systems, political systems, legal and regulatory systems, institutional structures, labor laws and regulations, financial institution structures, the economic role, availability and use of external capital, andmyriad other differences encountered when crossing borders. The benefits of crossing borders are also influenced by these and other factors, which include access to new markets for your products and brand; economies of scale and scope; sourcing of cheaper inputs like labor, managerial personnel, raw materials, and R&D; and lower cost regulatory and environmental laws and regulations. Therefore, operating across borders can be very complex. Consequently, it is logical to seek and use appropriate design principles to guide course design in international business. Based on Biggs (2003), it seems that five design principles can be formulated. Accordingly, the teaching materials used in such a course should be authentic and relevant, as well as sequential and interlinked; engage students’ ever higher cognitive processes; align with each other and learning goals; and challenge and motivate the students to learn. Commonly used materials for an international business (IB) course cover a range of pedagogies and would include lectures and discussions, class and take-home projects, real-world projects and internships, interactions with foreign individuals, and relevant experiences in foreign countries. Of course, there are many ways to put all of these components together to maximize learning outcomes. IB course design must be customized to reflect the peculiar conditions faced with regard to prior student preparation, the place of the IB course in the overall curriculum, and the available resources and other local college conditions. Though this can provide a great deal of flexibility for a course designer, it can also be overwhelming. Fortunately, many examples of excellent IB course design are available in the literature (Wolf & Wright, 2014). JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 2018, VOL. 29, NO. 4, 267–271 https://doi.org/10.1080/08975930.2018.1560676