Introduction

Article Type: Introduction From: Journal of International Education in Business, Volume 6, Issue 1

In the 2012, the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne hosted a conference entitled: Higher Education Research and the Student Learning Experience in Business (HERSLEB). Held over three days from 10 to 12 December, the conference had a number of aims:

• 1.

  to bring together key contributors to the field of scholarly research into the student learning experience in business;

• 2.

  to facilitate exchange of knowledge, experiences, and achievements; and

• 3.

  to prompt communication about current trends, future developments and innovations relating to the student learning experience in higher education in business.

Over 50 presentations were given on six key themes during the conference:enhancing student learning through emerging technologies; experiential learning,capstone courses and co-curricula; innovations in assessment and feedback;internationalisation of the student cohort and the curriculum; peer mentoring in higher education; assurance of learning and assessing graduate attributes. On the third day, as part of the conference, we hosted the OLT-sponsored event,“Hunters and Gatherers” on the topic of assurance of learning.

The peer-reviewed papers appearing in this issue of the Journal of International Education in Business are a selection from the papers presented on the day.

All four papers deal, in very different ways, with a common theme: namely, how to best teach and improve graduate attributes in the business curriculum. This theme is dealt with explicitly in three of the four papers in this issue. The graduate attribute of most interest in two of these papers is the skill of English literacy; arguably the most important of all for employment success. This is especially the case for Commerce graduates where large numbers of students from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESBs) are known to have ongoing difficulties. In the case of the third paper, the theme of graduate attributes is addressed by means of quality assurance; how well educators and educational institutions are measuring graduate attributes such as English literacy. In the final paper, the theme of graduate attributes is dealt with implicitly,subordinated to the aim of improving learning outcomes by means of Web 2.0 technologies, and in particular, the use of wikis in the curriculum.

Each of the four papers illuminates different elements of the issue of graduate attributes. Keith McNaught and Roselynn Lang’s paper deals with introducing reflective writing into a Business Internship capstone subject. They conducted a study in which writing critical reflections were embedded as a formal part of the assessment. Long assumed to be important for both professional practice and work-integrated learning, and for personal and professional growth, writing critical reflections is well-known to be a difficult writing genre. Due to lack of experience with the genre, most students participating in the capstone found the tasks challenging. For students with weak English language skills,regardless of origin, performance was below expected standards. Both local students and international students with strong English language skills,unsurprisingly, performed much better; their competence in the language allowing for greater meta-cognitive fluency. The authors note the critical importance of the early introduction of embedded literacy programs in the curriculum,especially given the move towards regulatory compliance for accreditation of business programs as part of quality assurance processes. They also recommend rigorous grading in literacy programs – failing students if necessary– and suggest urgent fundamental reform in the tertiary sector to ensure that students engage with academic support services to improve their English literacy – recognised by all to be a vital skill for employment beyond the university.

Barry O’Mahony, Elena Verezub, John Dalrymple and Santina Bertone’s paper outlines a more traditional, well-established approach to building faculty-specific English literacy skills; an academic writing support intervention into a higher degree by research program (HDR). This is not a novel approach in higher education, though documentation of Commerce-based interventions in this area is fairly rare. Whilst international students are admitted into HDR programs in Commerce disciplines with a satisfactory IELTS band score, proficiency in English is known to vary widely in practice, and students seldom feel confident with their English writing skills, even at doctoral level. Conducted over a two-year period, O’Mahony et al.’s study aimed to assist students both “ontogenetically” (engaging with the literature) and “microgenetically” (the timely production of a thesis). Held once or twice weekly, the intervention provided individual support for 31 HDR students over the period of the intervention, the majority of whom were either international students or local students from a NESB. Following a needs analysis, a regular piece of written work was produced for the language specialist and the thesis supervisor, this serving as a basis for discussion and language improvement. Occasional meetings between the student, supervisor, and language specialist were held, and at the end, focus group interviews were used to evaluate the program. Unsurprisingly, the major findings were that a writing support intervention builds student confidence. The intervention provided a writing “scaffolding” for students, complemented the supervisors’input, resulted in significantly improved written work; and over time, resulted in less dependence on the language advisor. While successful, the author notes that such interventions are developmental in nature (not a “quick fix”),must be embedded early in the students’ candidature, and – to be fully effective – should be a long term investment by the institution in the production of better, more timely, theses; and more literate, and employable, students.

Angelito Calma’s paper also looks at generic skills, and English literacy,but from a very different angle. The measurement of student performance against learning outcomes – assurance of learning – is, for business faculties, now an important feature of the tertiary landscape. This is especially the case given recent moves towards accreditation. However, this belies an under-researched gap: evidence of improved graduate attributes is assumed, but seldom measured, as the product of a tertiary education, despite the clear importance of these attributes for the workplace beyond the university. Can generic skills be effectively measured? His study attempts to do this by assessing four generic skills: written communication, mathematical and statistical skills, critical thinking, and information literacy, used data collected from a corpus of student work, a sample of 341 papers, from 11 commerce subjects over a two-year period. Using assessment rubrics developed with the involvement of subject coordinators adapted specifically for each subject – and using external assessors from each field (including an English as a Second Language specialist to assess written communication) –Calma makes a number of findings. Students in the sample were strongest at providing evidence of mathematical and statistical skills and information literacy, as the outcome of a course of study. They were weakest at providing evidence of critical thinking and written communication skills. In particular,students did not demonstrate much evidence of “viewing situations from different perspectives and discussing or integrating ideas” (critical thinking). More disturbingly, only around half of the samples were identified as being “good” or “excellent” in terms of written work. Much of the work sampled exhibited grammatical errors, tense confusion, lack of clarity and coherence in expression, and a variety of other infelicities. This indicates that competence in English – arguably the most important graduate attribute of all – is not being adequately taught on Australian university campuses. Universities claim to teach it, but there is no reliable evidence that they do.

Chandana Rathnasiri Hewege and Liyanage Chamila Roshani Perera’s paper looks at how the introduction of a wiki into a course in International Marketing resulted, in part, into improved written participation by NESB students, and more effective learning outcomes. The authors present an extensive literature review on the use of Web 2.0 technologies, noting that while research has focussed on the use and functionality of wikis in curriculum design, there is a paucity of work on pedagogical implications. They look at the implications of a“wiki-based pedagogy” which assumes an “emancipatory”,partially-“constructivist” paradigm of learning, where teachers should be ready to “loosen the controls of the conventional teaching-centred learning environment”. This, they argue, is a necessary step to take if wiki-based pedagogy is to become more widespread as a form of teaching, learning and assessment. Their study looked at three student-generated wikis, and written text from 30 student assignments, and followed this with interview data from both the perspectives of students and an independent teaching panel. Consistent with previous studies, they found that overall, wikis promoted collaborative learning, organic discussions and independent thinking. These outcomes were especially beneficial to NESB students who are often inhibited in their responses in typical classroom settings. Against previous studies, however, they found that students adapted to wiki-based pedagogy very well, and with little difficulty. They also found that there were differential levels of student engagement in wikis, and that occasionally wikis resulted in stagnated discussions, unless clearly aligned to the curriculum. They make a number of recommendations for integrating the use of wikis in the classroom.

Overall, this issue represents an emerging sub-field in the field of higher education: the student experience in international education in Business.

Acknowledgements

HERSLEB acknowledges the sponsorship by the Office for Learning and Teaching,Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia, and Emerald Publications.

Martin DaviesGuest Editor is Associate Professor in Higher Education in the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne. He was inaugural Chair of the HERSLEB Conference. Martin Davies can be contacted at: wmdavies@unimelb.edu.au