Coverage of international issues: curriculum assessment from a student perception prospective.

ABSTRACT

The study assesses international curriculum in the College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University based on student perception. The results of a survey conducted before and after the international competencies exam suggest three findings. First, students were neutral about how well the business curriculum prepared them in international issues. Secondly, students almost agreed that the coverage of international topics should be improved and that they understood why they needed to have a good knowledge of international issues. Last, unlike male students, female students significantly changed their perception after taking the international competencies exam.

1. INTRODUCTION

Almost 30 years have passed since the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) mandated that curriculum of all member institutions have an international component. Though it was a topic of discussion in business schools prior to the 1974 mandate, serious consideration of the internationalization of the curriculum was generally a peripheral process at best. Have significant strides been made in the last three decades? No doubt, a response to the question posed would evoke generalized, nebulous responses such as: perhaps, maybe, or progress can be seen in improved coverage in some functional areas, or progress is evident at selected individual institutions.

Schools and various other institutions have always been concerned with assessing the content of academic programs. One assessment tool used by hundreds of schools is the Major Field Test that is designed by the ETS (Educational Testing Service). In an effort to evaluate the internationalization of the curriculum in business schools, the ETS has included "international issues" among the assessment indicators used in the business major field test.

At Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), integrating global topics into academic offerings has become a major objective. In support of this objective, the College of Business has made a commitment to expanding its knowledge base in the international business area. To that end, the College has undertaken an assessment project in which an international competencies exam is given to graduating seniors to determine their international business knowledge. Using this exam, the authors of this research evaluated the coverage of international business topics from a student perception prospective. The purpose of the paper is to assess student perception about the coverage of international topics and to examine whether such perception is affected by taking the international competencies exam.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

A perusal of the business literature indicates quite clearly that internationalization of the curriculum has become a central theme for publication and research. A preponderance of articles and books has been written on the topic generally and specifically. Dozens of studies have looked at various aspects of the internationalization process (Kwok, 1994). Some have looked at functional areas of the curriculum; others have examined topic coverage of either undergraduate, master's, or doctoral level programs. A few of the studies have focused on specific geographical regions, others have sought input from leaders in business and industry, and a minimal number have been global and comprehensive in scope (Kwok, 1994).

Most research staunchly supports the need for continued enhancement of international concepts into the courses and total curriculum of business schools. Its merit and worthiness in today's business world seems to be a given. Globalization serves as a linkage and provides facilitation for competitive advantage. The decade of the 1980's saw an increase of 8.8% for multinational companies (Steinberg, 1992). Today, more than 60,000 multinational corporations exist, a number that is 8.5 times greater than some twenty-five years prior (Miller, 2002).

Occasionally, one finds criticism of the merits of globalization and training our students to prepare for a global workplace. These critics generally write editorial pieces in the popular business press or in newspapers or newsweeklies. A recent such article referred to globalization as globaloney (Miller, 2002). Perhaps this should be expected in the aftermath of the dot.com bubble burst and the terrorism of 9/11. Academic and scholarly writings continue to nurture the idea of improving curriculum through internationalization efforts. Their support comes from surveys of business educators and the views of business leaders and CEOs of multinational corporations (Ball, 1993).

While the authors of this paper believe that input from business leaders, business deans, faculty, and international specialists is immensely valuable, it is also of paramount importance to gauge the perceptions of students with regard to curriculum evaluation. With an arguable, broad-based consensus that most business schools simply strive to create a "general awareness" of international issues, it is imperative that we pay close regard to student perception.

As our graduates enter the workforce, they will learn international aspects of business on the job; some 80% of the CEOs of Forbes "100 Largest Multinational Firms" and Fortune's "50 American's Biggest Exporters" attest to that (Ball, 1993). Yet, the job of academicians is to train their students with a background / a foundation for that further intensive individualized corporate training. We must not get bogged down in the minutiae of such thoughts as optimal approaches and detailed functional area processes. Our challenge is to strive for inclusiveness across curriculum areas to expand learning opportunities for students in the international arena. This study is designed to examine student assessment of curriculum offerings regarding effectiveness of the internationalization component at MTSU.

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 International competencies exam

The College of Business at MTSU has grouped international business topics into 15 international competencies. These competencies are taught in several required business courses. To evaluate whether the undergraduate program effectively cover international competencies, the College has designed a test called "International Competencies Exam." This exam is given to graduating seniors in the business policy course. Since these seniors are in their last semester before they complete their undergraduate program, they are supposed to have been exposed to most international business topics. Thus the College assumes that students' performance in the international competencies exam can be used to assess how well the students are prepared in the international competencies topics.

3.2 The survey

The authors developed a survey questionnaire that was administered twice in Spring 2002. The questionnaire was given a few days before the international competencies exam (pre-exam questionnaire). An identical questionnaire was administered the second time right after the exam (post-exam questionnaire). The questionnaire started with a consent form that invited the students who chose to participate to sign their name. The survey itself had three sets of questions. In the first set, the students were asked to indicate how useful the coursework in the College of Business was in preparing them in each of the international topics. The second set of questions had four general questions related to students overall assessment of the international curriculum. The last set of questions had four demographic questions (e.g. gender, age).

At the completion of the survey, each participant's pre-exam questionnaire was matched with the same participant's post-exam questionnaire. After the match was finished, the consent forms were destroyed. Some questionnaires were discarded because the participants completed only one questionnaire, either before or after the international competencies exam. After the results were recorded, all the questionnaires were also destroyed.

3.3 Sample

The survey was administered in four of nine business policy classes that were offered in Spring 2002. Three of the four business policy classes were day classes and one was a night class. The four classes had a total enrollment of 116 students. Of those, 72 students completed both the pre-exam and the post-exam questionnaires, for a response rate of 62%. The 72 students included 32 males and 40 females. Most students were quite young (83% were below 25 years).

3.4 Statistical technique

The technique used to compare the measurement of student perception taken before the exam to the measurement recorded after the exam was the "Paired-Samples T Test." This technique provides the mean scores by question before and after a treatment, and then computes the difference between the scores before and after the treatment. To conduct the paired-samples T test, the pre-exam questionnaires were separated from the post-exam questionnaires. Then mean score of subjects (72 students) was calculated by question. After, the mean scores of various questions were added up. Finally, the total of mean scores for the pre-exam questionnaires was compared to the total of mean scores for the post-exam questionnaires.

4. DATA ANALYSIS

4.1 Reliability analysis

The reliability analysis addressed the issue of whether the questions consistently and accurately measured student perception about the curriculum coverage of international topics. The reliability analysis excluded demographic questions because the answers were supposed to be precise. The set of questions about the 15 international topics was reliable. For the 15 items, the Cronback's Alpha was .8920 for the pre-exam questionnaire and .9312 for the post-exam questionnaire. As to the general questions (questions 16 through 19), the analysis shows that their reliability was low: the Cronback's Alpha was .6925 and .5510 respectively before and after the exam. However, the Cronback's Alpha increased to .8216 and .7023 when question 16 was removed. So the discussion of the results will discard question 16.

4.2 Student perception

For each of the 15 international topics (see table 1), the students recorded their perception about the usefulness of coursework on a scale from 1 (totally useless) to 5 (very useful), with 3 being neutral. The averages of mean scores were 3.28 and 3.11 respectively before and after taking the exam. These averages suggest that the students thought that their coursework was neither useless nor useful in preparing them in each of the 15 international business topics.

When looking at individual topics, most mean scores were around 3 (neutral), with a high of 3.72 and a low of 2.74. This indicates that in almost all international topics the students did not think that the coursework was useful or useless in covering the international topics. In both the pre-exam and the post-exam surveys, the students thought that the topic where they were the least prepared was "Newly industrialized countries". The mean score for this topic was 2.82 and 2.74 respectively before and after taking the exam. Before taking the exam, the topic where the students said they were relatively best prepared was "International communication" (the mean score was 3.72). After taking the exam, the students thought that they were relatively best prepared in the "Strategies for entry into international markets" topic (the mean score was 3.49).

The general questions were related to students overall assessment of international curriculum. As mentioned earlier, question 16 was eliminated because it was less reliable. Student perception was recorded on a 5-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 3 (neutral) to 5 (strongly agree). According to the results, student perception was somewhat closer to agree. The average of mean scores was 3.64 and 3.70 respectively before and after the exam. The students almost agreed that the coverage of international topics should be improved (question 17) and that they understood why they needed to have a good knowledge of international issues (question 19).

4.3 The impact of test taking on student perception

The total of mean scores for international topics was 49.17 before the exam and 46.66 after the exam. Table 2 shows a statistically significant difference between student perception before and after taking the exam. Therefore, after taking the exam, the students changed their perception of how useful the coursework was in preparing them in international topics. Unlike international topics questions, general questions were not affected by test taking. Their total of mean scores before the exam was statistically the same as the total of mean scores after the exam.

4.4 The gender factor

The analysis further attempted to determine whether the significance of taking the exam on international topics questions was influenced demographic factors.

As can be seen in table 3, the male mean scores before the exam were about the same as the mean scores after the exam (the difference between the total mean scores before and after the exam was only 0.63). Therefore, male students' perception about how well the program offered in the College of Business covered international topics stayed the same before and after taking the exam. However, all the female mean scores before the exam were above their mean scores after the exam (the difference was 5.01). This result suggests that after taking the exam, female students systematically thought that international topics were not as well covered by the curriculum as they did before taking the exam. So while males' perception about the coverage of international topics apparently was not affected by the exam, females' perception was significantly influenced after taking the exam.

5. CONCLUSION

The study attempted to assess international curriculum based on student perception. There were two major results. First, the students were neutral about how well the required business courses prepared them in international topics.

Second, they agreed that the coverage of international topics should be improved. Last, female students significantly changed their perception after taking the international competencies exam while male students did not.

As noted earlier, most previous studies have measured input from deans, faculty, and business leaders to determine ways to strengthen the international component of the business curriculum. Some of these studies are indeed seminal pieces of research that provide an indirect foundation for a study of this nature. The authors believe much can be determined about how to improve curriculum offerings by seeking input from our customers, our students. What they believe coupled with our knowledge can improve our efforts to ready them for a world where globalization is a thread in the common fabric of many organizations.

TABLE 1. MEAN SCORES FOR INTERNATIONAL TOPICS

ITEMS                                           Pre-exam   Post-exam

1. International trade theories                 3.07       2.96
2. Diversity of the global environment          3.46       3.13
3. Major global political and economic
   institutions                                 3.10       2.92
4. Regional economic integration                3.08       2.93
5. Laws governing world commerce &
   extraterritoriality                          3.18       3.07
6. Major financial markets of the world         3.42       3.21
7. Financial instruments & documentation
   for world trade                              3.10       2.94
8. Balance of trade/payment & monetary/
   fiscal policies                              3.40       3.08
9. Newly industrialized countries               2.82       2.74
10. Government intervention in trade            3.17       3.15
11. Strategies for entry into international
    markets                                     3.68       3.49
12. Intl human resource management practices
    & peculiarities                             3.08       3.11
13. Differences in international markets        3.40       3.21
14. Motivation and leadership across cultures   3.49       3.33
15. International communication                 3.72       3.39

AVERAGE MEAN SCORE                              3.28       3.11

TABLE 2. PAIRED-SAMPLES T TEST RESULTS

                    Mean score total

Set of questions    Before exam   After exam   t statistic   P value

Topics questions    49.17         46.66        2.423         .018
General questions   10.93         11.11        -1.045        .300

TABLE 3. GENDER IMPACT ON STUDENT PERCEPTION

           Male's mean score              Female's mean score

Question   Before   After   Difference   Before   After   Difference

1          3.09     3.25    (0.16)       3.05     2.72    0.33
2          3.28     3.37    (0.09)       3.60     2.93    0.67
3          2.97     3.22    (0.25)       3.20     2.68    0.52
4          3.34     3.25    0.09         2.88     2.68    0.20
5          3.22     3.28    (0.06)       3.15     2.90    0.25
6          3.56     3.47    0.09         3.30     3.00    0.30
7          3.06     3.19    (0.13)       3.12     2.75    0.37
8          3.47     3.19    0.28         3.35     3.00    0.35
9          2.81     2.94    (0.13)       2.83     2.58    0.25
10         3.13     3.28    (0.15)       3.20     3.05    0.15
11         3.66     3.66    0.00         3.70     3.35    0.35
12         3.03     3.34    (0.31)       3.13     2.93    0.20
13         3.44     3.38    0.06         3.38     3.08    0.30
14         3.44     3.56    (0.12)       3.52     3.15    0.37
15         3.75     3.50    0.25         3.70     3.30    0.40
Total      49.25    49.88   (0.63)       49.11    44.10   5.01

6. REFERENCES

Ball, Donald A. & McCulloch, Jr., Wendell H., "The Views of American Multinational CEOs on Internationalized Business Education for Prospective Employees", Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 24 (2), 1993, 383-391.

Khosrowpour, Medhi & Greenawalt, Deborah, "The IRM Curriculum Model: An International Curriculum Model for a 4-Year Undergraduate Program", Information Resources Management Journal, Vol. 10 (2), 1997, 5-20.

Kwok, C., Arpan, J., and Folks, W., "A Global Survey of International Business Education in the 1990%", Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 25 (3), 1994, 605-623.

Martin, Jeanette S. & Chaney, Lillian H., "Determination of Content for a Collegiate Course in Intercultural Business Communication by Three Delphi Panels", The Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 39 (3), 1992, 267-283.

Miller, Karen Lowry. "Is it globaloney", Newsweek, Dec. 16, 2002, E4-E8.

Steers, Richard M. & Ungsen, Gerardo R., "In Search of the Holy Grail: Reflections on the Internationalization of Business Education", Journal of Business Administration, Vol. 21 (1,2), 1992/1993, 301-316.

Steinburg, Craig, "Global Learning", Training and Development, Vol. 46 (4), 1992, 11-15.