One finding from my study

At this stage, I am still preparing some data and playing with them in terms of creating themes and concept from the data. One of the emerging theme that I have found so far is the nature of international business course that stimulate student's participation in online education in international business.

Participants expressing the conception of nature of international business are distinguished among themselves. International business, as an area of study, is perceived as a highly engaged course whereby learners need to bring their previous life experiences as consumers, members of society, or observers of the world to understand the phenomenon of international business. Online learning is perceived as a platform to share and exchange their academics and life experiences (in the form of personal opinion) while they are learning in the formal education system. Furthermore, various forms of online education, such as webblog, discussion boards, or wiki, encourage them to be highly interactive in the learning process. As international business courses aim to create an understanding of the international aspects of management, for formulating and implementing effective strategies in an increasingly complex world economy, personal experiences and the roles of individual students as observers of changes in global and local factors were useful for the contribution in the online discussion and knowledge exchange among students in this study.

In three cases research interviewees referred to the nature of international business courses as “real-world” (NIB-1) and “tangible” (NIB-2), when compared to other disciplines in business and economics. In the first case, the participant identified his experience on “arguing” with his team mates on the discussion board regarding the effect of political ideology in China in choices of entry mode. He felt that he was less compelled to identify his “Asian” background in the discussion board, and that made him feel freer in setting lines of arguments to support his choice of entry mode and to criticise the role of Communist Party in China. The issue of race and ethnicity and other “sensitive” issues (NIB-3) in international business courses can be freely and openly discussed using online platforms because the identity of the students is not explicitly demonstrated as in the traditional face-to-face learning.