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This article aims to assist professors in introducing concepts of self, philosophy, religions, the universe, existential dilemmas, etc., in their basic international business classes. Using active learning and five-member student teams, a student organized and administered conference adds a very useful dimension of knowledge sacrificing only one teaching day. The article, capitalizing on more than 25 years of international business teaching and conference experiences, provides "how-to" suggestions to organize similar events. (Contains 5 notes.)

The article presents the successful experience of teaching the basic International Business (IB) undergraduate class, in an interactive way and in classes of more than 200 students. The approach follows modified routines taught in AACSB workshops for much smaller audiences and capitalizes on 5-member student teams. The format has been used for three years in a row and has produced extremely good results, including significant class interest, very high outcome assessments, annual CD-ROMs on a variety of topics, a very active student association, student-organized conferences, a career center, student-to-business interaction and undertaking of social causes.

In this paper the components of an undergraduate International Business (IB) course, developed and taught according to corporate suggestions, are related to the importance attached to each of the components by the students taking the class. In the continuation, areas of positive or negative student predispositions are identified and suggestions and remedial actions on how to improve delivery of this course are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This pilot study measures levels of cross-cultural understanding and ethnocentricity of college students and tests the hypothesis that students exhibit increased levels of cross-cultural understanding and lower levels of ethnocentricity after taking a university course in international business. Two matched-demographic groups of students are surveyed, one before taking the course, and t l' e other following completion of the course. The findings indicate some tendency to change in ,a positive direction with increased exposure to international business issues. The study also uses a factor analytical approach to examine the underlyin structures of attitudes relating to cmss-cultural understanding andethnocentricity. In this respect, differences in cross-cultural understanding and ethnocentricity are found to exist among sub-groups of the research population, with women and cosmopolitans scoring higher in terms of cross-cultural understanding and lower in ethnocentric- . Practical implications and suggestions for further research are a '7 so offered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]