INTERNATIONAL STUDY PROJECT - 2019/0

Module Overview

The International Study Project is designed to give students the opportunity to experience a different business and economic environment and learn to work in a different cultural context. The module integrates the learning from across the programme curriculum and creates an opportunity to study in depth an aspect of business and management that is particularly pertinent to the host location.

Locations for the International Study project are chosen for their particularly salient business/economic/cultural characteristics, e.g. a city, region or an entire country may stand out for its innovative clusters, social entrepreneurship initiatives, specific industries, or economic conditions.

Working in teams of 3-5, students will consolidate and deepen their knowledge and understanding of the relevant areas of study through their engagement with the live challenge set by the client organisation. They will conduct background research, engage with the client organisation, collect, analyse and interpret relevant data to develop novel, evidence-based solutions to the problems set out in the client brief. They prepare a consulting report, present it to the client organisation and for assessment by the module team.

Thus, in addition to their cultural awareness and international business acumen, students will be developing their professional skills with a particular emphasis on consulting skills.

Module provider

Surrey Business School

Module Leader

ZDUNCZYK Katarzyna (SBS)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 7

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

n/a

Module content

Indicative content includes:

Students will travel to an overseas destination, where they will participate in a series of lectures and presentations by academics and business practitioners and visit outstanding local companies to learn more about the context-specific challenges and opportunities as well as the business strategies, solutions and capabilities that have made them successful.

The host companies will set a consulting challenge for the students, which will require that they integrate the knowledge from their programme and the study trip to develop original solutions to a real business problem.

Working in groups of 3-5, students will:

- engage with a client organisation in a professional and effective manner;
- interpret a consulting brief from a client;
- define the scope of the project in terms of the issues that require investigation;
- select appropriate sources of information and methods of data collection and analysis;
- design an effective approach to conducting a consulting project given the requirements of the client brief and the circumstances of their engagement with the client organisation;
- conduct relevant research on behalf of the client organisation with professionalism and sensitivity to political and ethical dimensions of the assignment;
- select and deploy appropriate analytical tools and frameworks to analyse and interpret the data;
- reach evidence-based conclusions and develop innovative solutions and recommendations for the client organisation.
- act ethically and with professional integrity.

Students also benefit from taught sessions on the consulting process and skills, delivered in a blended format, and are supported throughout by an academic advisor.

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

Individual Report - 80% Individual Coursework - 20%

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate advanced understanding of the subject matter pertinent to their consulting project and their mastery of the learning outcomes through practical application.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module is based on the live consulting project that students carry out for a client organisation.

This is an integrative collaborative project that demonstrates students’ module specific learning as well as showcasing their knowledge from across the programme curriculum, their cognitive skills as well as their practical ability to apply their learning to complex problems and tasks in an international business context.

The assessment consists of two elements:

• 20-minute group presentation reflecting on the experience of working and studying internationally (20%)

• 4,000-word Consulting Report, including a 1,500-word executive summary (80%);

In the event that any student would not be able to contribute to the group presentation, they will be given an alternative assessment:

• 1,500-word individual reflective essay (20%)

In the event that any student would not be able to contribute to the group report, they will be given an alternative assessment:

• 4,000-word individual report, including 1,500-word executive summary (80%)

Formative assessment

n/a

Feedback

Students receive formative feedback throughout the duration of the module in the form of team meetings with their academic advisor.

Module aims

• Provide students with an international learning experience, including studying and working in an international context.
• Enable students to gain a first-hand, in-depth understanding of a different business, cultural, and economic context, e.g. industry/industry cluster, different economic environment, political system, social or environmental conditions.
• Allow students the opportunity to enhance their learning of subject matter from across the programmre curriculum by applying it in a different cultural and economic context;
• Provide students with a structured set of opportunities to develop their professional skills in the area of management consulting through the engagement with a client organisation in a live project context.
• Enable students to scope, design and develop a major piece of original work for a client organisation.
• Enable students to gain experience of conducting applied research to develop effective, evidence-based solutions and recommendations in an international context.
• Develop an awareness of the issues that may arise in the course of working in unfamiliar business and cultural environments.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to ensure that students achieve the learning outcomes for the module; these relate to (1) personal and professional development with a focus on international business acumen and consulting skills; (2) integration of knowledge from across the programme curriculum; (3) in-depth understanding of a different business, cultural, and economic context, e.g. industry/industry cluster, different economic environment, political system, social or environmental conditions.

In preparation for the international study visit that constitutes the core of this module, students will undertake two interactive sessions preparing them for the experience and focusing their attention of the salient academic aspects of the trip. They will also participate in four taught sessions dedicated to developing consulting skills and the consulting process. Both kinds of sessions may be delivered in a blended format.

Students will travel to an overseas destination to learn, in an experiential and immersive way, about the context-specific challenges and opportunities as well as the business strategies, solutions and capabilities relevant in that context. They will participate in a series of lectures and presentations by academics and business practitioners and visit outstanding local companies.

They will have the support of an academic advisor throughout the duration of the module. The academic advisor will meet with each team regularly throughout the duration of the module. The meetings may be face-to-face or online (synchronously).

The learning and teaching methods include:

• Self-directed learning pertains to engaging with learning materials and undertaking desk-research required for classroom participation, client engagement and independent project work.

• Practical tutorials are designed to develop a practical understanding of the consulting process and skillset through guided discussion, engaging in classroom practical exercises, video and case analyses;

• Lectures and presentations by academics and local business practitioners to provide students with the knowledge of the local business context;

• Company visits allow students to develop an experiential understanding of the relevant industry(-ies) and business practice pertinent to the live consulting project they undertake in this module;

• Independent project work: students learn through engaging with the client organisation and applying the knowledge and skills from the module and the programme to their consulting project in an integrative and original manner;

• Experiential learning: students experience a different business environment first-hand and learn in an immersive way by acting as consultants in a real situation of engagement with a client;

• Team advisory meetings support students in their project work through systematic review of progress, discussion and formative feedback from an academic tutor. These may be run face-to-face or online (synchronously);

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: MANM446

Other information

None.

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2019/0 academic year.