Developing Students Global Mindset: An Event-Based Approach

ABSTRACT

Teaching and learning international business requires a broad and integrated perspective. This manuscript discusses a pedagogical exercise students have undertaken that is both broad and integrated and as a result expands not only their global mindset but also a broader perspective about self, others, and the world they live in. The exercise in undergraduate marketing and international business courses is innovative, engaging, impactful, and fun. Survey results and student reflections suggest that the exercise enhanced the global mindset of students and broadened their perspective. Further, students through critical reflection appear to have expanded their perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Global mindset
• employer needs
• student engagement
• learning theories
• international exhibition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ According Kolb (1984) reflection serves two important functions when learning. First, it intermediates experience and action to create meaning. Kolb (1984) states, “Learning the creation of knowledge and meaning, occurs through the active extension and grounding of ideas and experiences in the external world and through reflection about the attributes of these experiences and ideas (p.52). Reflection helps learners adapt skills and knowledge to different or new situations and applications and as such the goal is still more cause and effect than descriptive.

² Often, most students do not show much inclination to interact with students who are different from them (e.g., international students, students from different ethnic backgrounds etc.) even when such opportunities come their way in classes (at present, approximately 32% of all students attending this university are first-generation college students and also 79% students commute or did not live in dorms or student housing). Focus groups with students revealed how even within a group that included students from different backgrounds or countries, how self-centered and goal oriented most students were. Students simply focused on their project or assignment at hand without much regard to interacting or getting to know their group members and build relationships, especially with those students who were from different countries. Smart phones and social media have exacerbated this problem of lack of deep interaction between students. In fact it was suggested by the participants in the focus groups that the instructor had to find creative ways to make students from different backgrounds interact more with one another. If not, the standard practice was to agree on assignment responsibilities of each group member, get the job done, and go their separate ways.

³ Outline required the following from each team: Country, two to three competitive country advantages that they would like to promote (e.g., cheap labor, location advantages, openness to new investments, tourism, political stability and economic reforms etc. and why they believe those are competitive advantages [with sources], how they plan to make these opportunities stand out (method such as poster boards, video presentations etc.), and ways they plan to make the exhibit interesting and exciting (appearance such as dressing up, sample food, etc.).

⁴ Even if the 12-item scale could have been administered at two different time periods (beginning of the term and after the event), it would not have been possible to partial out learning from the exercise from learning from the course as a whole. In addition, there would have been several other unaccounted confounding variables between the two time periods. Students having to identify themselves would have increased the likelihood of favorable responses. As such, the way the data was gathered (including distracting questions in between) increased the chances of respondents not remembering that they had answered the same questions earlier in the survey. Respondents remaining anonymous also increased the chance of unbiased student responses. In fact, the survey instructions asked students to be honest with their responses because there were no right or wrong answers.

⁵ For example, if the group was focusing on cheap labor as a competitive advantages, they had to provide additional information such as availability of le skilled vs. unskilled labor, availability, ease of doing business with benchmarks.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarath A. Nonis

Dr. Sarath A. Nonis is Professor of Marketing at Arkansas State University. His current research interests are in the area of marketing and international business education. His research work have been published in a wide range of journals such as Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Thunderbird International Business Review, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, and Journal of Marketing Education.

Clint Relyea

Dr. Clint Relyea is an Associate Professor of Management at Troy University. His is also the Director of the Sorrell College of Business's Global Scholars program. Clint's research has appeared in journals such as Thunderbird International Business Review and The Journal of Teaching International Business. He has extensive international teaching experience around the world and his area of research is Global Citizenship.

C. Shane Hunt

Dr. C. Shane Hunt is the Dean of the College of Business and Professor of Marketing at Idaho State University. Shane received his Ph.D. in Marketing from Oklahoma State University, where he was an AMA-Sheth Foundation and National Conference in Sales Management Doctoral Fellow. Shane's research interests include professional selling, logistics and supply chain management, and marketing education and his research has appeared in numerous journals including The Journal of Personal Selling and sales Management and The Journal of Business Logistics.