Online Teaching in International Business

1. Online delivery of international business education

Higher education, including that in International Business (IB), faces a number of challenges. One of the primary challenges is its cost that is rising at a much faster pace than any other costs except medical costs. We now have skyrocketing and debilitating student debt problem in the US. These rising costs also limit access to higher education. Unlike most modern industries that have been disrupted to varying degrees by new technologies, higher education does not seem to have undergone such disruption. Many critics are pointing to online education as a less expensive alternative. How would online education impact IB education? We address the question here in this issue.

Online education offers many advantages. Many geographically dispersed students can take advantage of such education. In many cases, online education can also be asynchronous so that students can attend classes at times convenient to them. At the same time, professors can record their lessons at times convenient for them. These freedoms of time and place in learning can dramatically expand the size and diversity of a class and the range of teaching and learning pedagogies used.

Given the advantages of time and place, online education has expanded dramatically in popularity over the last decade. According to the data by the National Center for Education Statistics, between 2007 and 2017, the percentage of US undergraduate students who participated in online or distance education at degree-granting institutions increased from 20.6% to 32.9%, and the percent of undergraduate enrollment that took online education exclusively rose from a mere 3.8% to 13.3%. Accompanying the rapid growth in the demand and offering of online education is the increased attention to the quality and effectiveness of online education. For example, according to Arbaugh, Formicary, and Hwang (2016), of the top 100 most cited business management education research from 1974 to 2014, almost a quarter are related to the topic of distance education and online teaching and learning.

Geographic and cultural diversity is particularly important in international business (IB) education. The Internet allows for greater exposure to foreign cultures. Web content, such as videos and blogs, enables students to learn about other countries and cultures in a rich and engaging manner without physically traveling outside of their home countries. Communication technologies, such as mobile chatting, social media, and video conferencing, facilitate student communications and collaboration across borders worldwide, including in virtual classroom settings. It should be noted here that as compared to the virtual experience of foreign countries via the web, actual presence overseas is a much richer experience. The web experiences are far cheaper and available more widely then actually going abroad. So, there is a clear tradeoff between depth vs. width of exposure to foreign cultures and experiences. Well-designed IB education efforts can and perhaps should benefit from both experiences.

The delivery of classes through the Internet can also create unique challenges to educators when it comes to teaching subjects related to IB, as well as teaching IB students who tend to be diverse in culture and language. For many IB educators, online education may require a fundamental change in the style of teaching and class management. Given the special nature of IB education, the key issue is to determine the appropriate roles of on-line versus face-to-face teaching in the various aspects of IB teaching.

Cross-cultural competence is at the heart of IB teaching. Johnson, Lenartowicz, and Apud (2006) argue that cross-cultural competence in international business refers to not only the knowledge, skills, and personal attributes of a person, but also the behavioral adoption the person undertakes to effectively interact with people from different cultures by utilizing the knowledge, skill, and attributes he/she possesses. Therefore, the training of cross-cultural competence should achieve two levels of development: 1) the knowledge and skills needed to develop a sufficient understanding of cultural difference, and 2) the ability to applying the knowledge and skills under specific circumstances in international business. Several JTIB issues have focused on the teaching of cross-cultural competence, such as cultural intelligence and global mind-set (e.g., Aggarwal and Goodell 2016, 2012; Aggarwal and Zhan 2018, 2017). But not all the methods and approaches in IB education can be equally effectively adapted for the online environment. While specific online courses tools and methods can be used to increase students’, cognitive capabilities associated with cross-cultural competence (i.e., Pathak 2018), the ability to applying cross-cultural knowledge and skills contextually tend to manifest through experiential learning where the experience is reinforced by feedback and reflection (Sternad 2015). For example, Feng and Betty (2016) proposes a four-stage reflective development model to enhance students’ cross-cultural competence through awareness, experience, reflection, and assessment. It becomes more difficult to design online components to address each step of the learning loop effectively.

In addition, compared to students of the traditional face-to-face classes, online learners are more autonomous and self-directed. Online courses need to be designed to ensure a well-structured knowledge base of easy-to-access material, a high level of learner activity, student interaction, and a format for motivation (Drew 2014). Teaching students with diverse backgrounds is an important consideration in IB education. A large variation in the student profile regarding the culture, language skill, learning ability, and learning style can bring obstacles to online class management. For example, different learning styles between eastern and western students increases the complexity of formatting the course to keep students motivated. Projects with global virtual teams are often used for IB classes, but the language barrier and cultural differences usually bring challenges in building trust and managing conflict in the virtual teams (Shea et al. 2011), especially in the online setting, where time difference and technological issues may further disrupt the communication.

In sum, it seems that online teaching has a place in IB education. As many suggest, online education is particularly useful in conveying facts and basic concepts. Online teaching also offers many advantages for IB education in providing inexpensive though not in-depth exposure to cross-border experiences. The challenge is to define what aspects of IB education can be delegated to online methods. Online teaching is an ongoing discussion in IB education. As the demand for online education continues to grow, more work is needed for continuously improving the content, pedagogical design, as well as the delivery and management of online IB courses.

2. Introducing this issue

This issue of JTIB features four papers that investigate various aspects of the online teaching of IB courses. The first two articles compare the learning outcomes of IB courses comparing online and face-to-face formats. The third article proposes digital teaching tools that can help improve students’ learning experience. The last article of this issue examines the association between attendance and performance in the online course setting.

The first article, titled “Course Delivery Format, Global Openness, and Openness to Experience in International Business Classes” by Jiun-Shiu Chen of McNeese State University, Scott Mooty of Texas A&M University Texarkana, and Jeffery Stevens and Barron Brown of McNeese State University, studies the impact of taking an international business course (IB) under both online and face-to-face methods on changes in the attitudinal construct global openness. The authors find that taking IB significantly increases students’ degree of global openness in both online and face-to-face methods; however, the increase is greater with face-to-face students than those online. By dividing the sample into both high versus low openness to experience and online versus face-to-face methods, the findings presented show differences between the high and low openness to experience groups in both online and face-to-face courses. In face-to-face classes, the results showed that the low openness students increased their degree of global openness more than the high openness to experience students. This increase is not found to be significant with the online high openness group indicating that online IB education is less effective with high openness to experience students. The overall results suggest face-to-face teaching is more effective in making attitudinal changes than online teaching.

The second article, titled “Effectiveness of a negotiation simulation game in IB learning” by Haiyan Yin of Indiana University South Bend, describes a foreign investment negotiation simulation game and evaluates its effectiveness on the teaching and learning of international business. The game involves the application of the major topics of an introductory international business course in a setting that is close to the real world, thus allows students to explore the association between theory and practice. By quantitative and qualitative analysis on the primary data collected from both face-to-face and online classes at the same time, the study finds strong evidence that the negotiation simulation game significantly improves students learning in both class settings, and the poor performers benefit the most from the simulation game. Evidence also shows that the simulation game is more effective in enhancing students learning in the traditional face-to-face class than the online class, indicating class settings matter. The findings suggest higher-level learning requires deep engagement of students, and student-centered active learning strategies like the negotiation simulation game can effectively engage all students, including those who are difficult to engage with other traditional pedagogical methods. Therefore, the simulation game can be an important addition to the teaching portfolio to accommodate students with different learning styles.

The third article, titled “Increasing classroom engagement in international business courses via digital technology” by Ilke Kardes of Valdosta State University, proposes some digital tools that can help to reduce learning barriers related to the syllabus, class attention, real-life examples, and test anxiety in international business courses. Using both primary and secondary data research, such as in-depth interviews and teaching insights shared on the Internet, the author collects information on the challenges in teaching and possible digital solutions to overcome those obstacles. The author proposes 22 digital tools that educators can integrate into the IB classroom to improve the learning experience of students.

The fourth article, titled “Class-attendance and online-test results: reflections for continuous assessment” by Ana Zorio-Grima and Paloma Merello-Gimenez of Universitat de Valencia Facultat d’Economia, presents evidence that some students seem to be getting unfairly penalized for nonattendance and provides alternative assessment solutions taking into account the different profile of the students. This study is based on the performance in online tests of Financial Accounting courses, where students learn about the legal accounting framework from both national and IB perspectives. Evidence shows that attendance is associated with online test performance for the overall class, but not for the best-performing students. The findings suggest that the continuous assessment system may require a specific level of attendance if the online test performance drops below a certain grade. That way, these students would have an extra motivation to attend classes, but better-performing students who are keeping best and second grades in their online tests will not be penalized for missed classes as long as they keep performing well.

As in the past, we hope you enjoy reading this issue and that you find it thought-provoking – perhaps even giving you ideas to improve your own teaching. We would appreciate hearing all your comments on this issue.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raj Aggarwal

Raj Aggarwal, PhD, CFA, is a Member of the Board of the Kent State University Foundation and ERC Inc. He is also the Sullivan Professor of International Business and Finance Emeritus and the former Business Dean at the University of Akron, USA. He is a Fellow and a former VP and program chair of the Academy of International Business. He has won many awards for outstanding teaching and scholarship. He is or has been also a Board Member of corporations, mutual funds, and nonprofit organizations. He is a past editor of Financial Practice and Education, a Finance and Accounting area editor of the Journal of International Business Studies, and the current Editor of the Journal of Teaching in International Business. Raj Aggarwal is the author of numerous scholarly publications and is in the top one-third of a percent among SSRN authors ranked by downloads. He has about 8,000 Google Scholar citations with an h-index of 45, and an I-10 index of over 135.

Yinglu Wu

Yinglu Wu, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Boler College of Business, John Carroll University, USA. Her recent publications include articles in Journal of Interactive Marketing, Decision Support Systems, and Journal of Teaching in International Business. She is the Assistant Editor of the Journal of Teaching in International Business.