Comparing Students’ Performance in an International Business Class Across Two Nations: An Exploratory Study
Mourad Dakhli and Ihsen Ketata
Georgia State University, USA
Volume 10: 2015, pp. 95-116; ABSTRACT
The internationalization of the American model of higher education, especially in business and management has led to the adoption of a wide array of North American practices and approaches. This, among others, has included the incorporation of courses and programs developed at leading universities in the U.S.A. As a result, teaching the foundational International Business (IB) course at the undergraduate level which has become a common practice across a large number of U.S.-based colleges and universities is also becoming a common practice internationally. The survey of IB in various forms has become a common component of the undergraduate business curriculum internationally. This study leverages this internationalization trend by comparing and contrasting students’ performance in an introductory IB course at an American Public University (APU) and a Middle Eastern Gulf region University that adopted the American model of higher education (GAU). We focus on the role of gender and culture in affecting student performance in the IB course across the two nations. Our study contributes to the existing literature in thee ways. First, using a comparative approach, we provide preliminary insight into how well American-based educational practices translate in the Middle East, an area that is not well-covered in business research. Second, we extend Hofstede’s cross-cultural research and apply it to explain similarities and differences in students’ performance on different educational assessment dimensions. We discuss the findings of our exploratory study and offer directions for future research. Finally, we provide a refined view of differences within and between countries in learning assessment, and complement our quantitative research with qualitative insight from leading practitioners in the field.
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