A Suite of Student Research Assignments in International Management

Abstract

Our approach to teaching is to have a student centred learning environment where students take primary responsibility for learning and the instructor provides the environment in which such learning can take place (Paris & Combs, 2000). This replaces the traditional concept of education occurring through the transfer of knowledge from the instructor to the student. To this end, we have developed three student assignments that address major topic areas in a typical international management class (environmental analysis, specifically political and economic risk; globalization versus localization strategies; and international human resource management practices, specifically expatriate compensation). These assignments are a sample of the learning activities we use in our undergraduate international management course. There is no one ‘right answer’ to any of the three assignments and typically no two student papers look alike. However, each assignment requires considerable outside research with students developing answers and providing support for their answers.