Suzanne Kane

Internationalization of U.K. University Business Schools: A Survey of Current Practice

A questionnaire was sent to the heads of internationalization in the business schools of all U.K. universities. Sixty-five replies were received. The document covered, inter alia, the internationalization activities undertaken by the respondents’ schools, the intensities with which internationalization had been implemented, motives for internationalizing, approaches adopted (gradualistic vs. simultaneous), possible links with graduate employability, and the role of innate predilections toward internationalization held by senior business school managers. A schematic model intended to explain the speed, extent, and intensity of a business school’s internationalization was developed and tested. It transpired that levels of internationalization activity within the sample institutions were substantial. The degree and/or speed of internationalization within a business school appeared to depend significantly on the financial situation of the host university, managerial inclinations favoring internationalization, financial dependence on foreign students, the desire to attract greater numbers of students from overseas, the size of the business school and the age of its host university, and the belief among senior managers that an internationalized curriculum improved the employment and career prospects of British born as well as foreign students.

Students’ interpretations of the meanings of questionnaire items in the National Student Survey

In many countries the outputs from university student satisfaction surveys are used for a variety of educational management purposes. Within the United Kingdom, the main instrument employed by state authorities to measure student satisfaction is the National Student Survey (NSS). The issue investigated by the current research related to whether students with different personal characteristics might ascribe disparate meanings to the wordings of particular items designed to measure certain dimensions of the NSS (for example, what is meant by ‘prompt’ feedback or by ‘fair’ marking). A sample of 319 business studies students in a UK university completed questionnaires concerning their learning orientations, levels of engagement with their courses, study skills and family backgrounds and their interpretations of the meanings of key dimensions of the NSS. A conjoint analysis methodology was applied to identify variations in interpretations. The results suggest that students with different kinds of learning orientation and different levels of engagement may hold disparate views on the meanings of key NSS dimensions. This brings into question the utility of employing overall average values of students’ assessments of these matters for educational management and decision-making purposes. Within the present sample, disparities between the all-sample outcomes and the results for individuals who exhibited low levels of engagement with their programmes were especially pronounced.

Factors affecting university teaching team effectiveness in detached working environments

This paper presents the outcomes of a study of the factors that contribute to teaching team effectiveness in situations where team members rarely meet face to face. Academic faculty within a university Business School were asked to report the degrees to which they believed that the module teaching teams to which they belonged contained members who (1) were satisfied and committed, and (2) regarded their teams as cohesive and as engaging in reliable and useful internal communications. All the teams covered by the study operated in ‘detached’ manners. Team members’ perceptions of the presence within their teams of trust, shared understanding, disparate educational orientations among participants and certain leadership styles were also examined. A model of the determinants of detached team effectiveness was constructed and tested. The respondents’ opinions vis-à-vis levels of satisfaction, commitment, cohesion and the value of internal team communications were then compared with metrics concerning student satisfaction and rates of progression on specific modules. Trust, shared understanding, differences in educational orientation among team members, conflict and the frequency of (though not the length of time spent on) communications emerged as major influences on perceptions of team effectiveness. Teams that were regarded as operating effectively appeared to be associated with higher student satisfaction and progression ratings.