Count the Resources? Make the Resources Count!

By Tiffany Ko

“We are trying to make the most out of every opportunity to give students intercultural exposure in many different ways no matter how small the opportunity is” Dr. Archimedes David Guerra said.

“My classroom is comprised mostly of Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese students BUT…”
As a HKBU-affiliated member lecturing in the Department of Marketing, School of Business, Dr. Guerra is aware that a culturally diverse classroom assists the development of global sensitivity—an attribute essential to all (Business) graduates. That said, he also notices that the availability of a diverse classroom is contingent on student registration and can vary from one semester to another. Instead of letting such uncertainty reign, Dr. Guerra spiced up his course by adding meaningful international components.

“Marketing Field Study for Social Entrepreneurship” is one of the few courses in the BCom (Hons) Marketing curriculum embedded with physical exchange. Participants are traditionally offered a five-day trip to visit social ventures abroad coupled with pre-trip seminars and a post-trip group presentation. The teacher further leveraged the intercultural dimension of this field trip in two ways:

“We can make better use of external resources”
In summer 2017, the teacher took extra steps to increase the breadth and depth of the intercultural experience delivered in the short study tour. In addition to the company visits, he lined up a networking session in the form of a business party on the last day to encourage interactions between the students and local social entrepreneurs in Seoul. Dr. Guerra was glad to observe that students who hesitated to raise questions to the CEOs during the company visits had greater confidence to share their ideas in the semi-formal networking setting.

“We can make better use of technology”
Moreover, he invited the entrepreneurs in Seoul to participate in the post-trip student presentations conducted in Hong Kong by using technology. Each student group was required to present a marketing plan for one of the social enterprises they visited during the field study. The respective social entrepreneurs were invited to watch the presentations synchronously via Skype or Facebook Live and to give immediate feedback. The business representatives who were unable to join the live sessions were also provided with video recordings for comments. All of these comments contributed to a small portion of grading. By expanding the presentation audience from the course instructor to the entrepreneurs, the teacher helped extend the students’ learning experience and demonstrate learning outcomes to the stakeholders of the trip.

With proactivity and creativity, Dr. Guerra made mindful modifications to help maximise a course’s capacity in intercultural competence training. His case consolidates once again a fundamental belief of CoP – ITL: the shape and boundary of internationalising teaching and learning exist only in imagination.

Acknowledgments
The feature story draws on an interview with Dr. Archimedes David Guerra who generously shared with us his experiences and insights, and we hope we have done justice to the wisdom of his practice in the internationalisation of teaching and learning.