If you are teaching International Business/Management later this year, please consider enhancing learning in your course by participating in the International Business Student Collaboration simulation.
The project is designed to give students an opportunity to gain first-hand experience in cross-cultural collaboration. About a thousand students from sixteen countries participated in the project in 2010-11 school year and we have confirmed participants from twelve countries for the next semester (all continents but Australia represented).
As usual, we have a disproportionally large number of US-based students, so we are trying to recruit more non-US participants.
Detailed information about the project can be found at http://www.vtaras.com/International_Cooperation_Project.html
Briefly, the idea is very simple. Instructors who teach IB/IM team up students from different countries to complete a term project. Collaborating on-line, students develop a business proposal (location of the business, staffing, marketing of the product/service, and so on) for a hypothetical IJV (working on teaming up with F500 corporations to make the project more realistic, chances are 50-50 for having corporate partners for this semester). Participation on the project is typically weighted as 20% of the course grade and performance is evaluated based on the quality of the team report and the ability of the team to meet the deadlines.
We provide all materials and administrative support, you distribute the instructions to your students and do the things you would do when running a regular team-based term project (answering students’ questions, grading reports, etc.).
Participation is completely free.
Although the project was designed as an experiential learning tool, it is also an excellent platform for research on international team dynamics and performance, as well as for personal, professional and inter-institutional collaboration.
The schedule is still being finalized, but the active phase of the project (when students are working together, exchanging ideas, writing the team report) is likely to commence around the first week of October and the report due date will be around the first week of December, giving our students about eight weeks to complete the project.
If you teach International Business or International Management course at a non-US university, your semester includes the October-November window, and you would like to participate in the project, please contact Vas Taras ([log in to unmask]).
Sincerely,
Vas Taras
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Vas Taras, PhD
Department of Business Administration
Bryan School of Business and Economics
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
349 Bryan
POB 26165, Greensboro, NC 27402-6165
336-256-8611
[log in to unmask]
www.vtaras.com