Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2008
| Sharon Thach Goes to the University of Tunis al-Manar The University of Tunis al-Manar and Tennessee State University have a multi-year cooperative agreement to exchange faculty and graduate students for joint research and teaching. This program involves the Masters in Entrepreneurship program of the National School of Engineering in Tunisia and the College of Business at TSU. After watching several sessions of her graduate marketing class, which involves the use of the Marketplace Global Competition, the head of the program in Tunisia asked if Sharon Thach, a professor at Tennessee State University, would try teaching an in-house version for three intensive weeks for their students. Sharon enthusiastically accepted the invitation and was delighted, not only by the warm welcome she received, but also by the excitement and competitiveness of her Tunisian students. The three-week intensive program alternated lectures and the playing of the 6-quarter Strategic Management simulation in January 2006 and the 8-quarter Strategic Marketing simulation in January 2007. Each class included about 25-27 students, with teams comprised of 4-5 students. The students tackled the English version of the simulation, as one of the demands of the administration was to use English and make it a secondary objective for the course. Needless to say, the language barrier was a big challenge for those students for which English is typically the third language. Sharon reported that reading English was not as difficult as having to speak it for most students. An effort was made during team formation to ensure that at least one student was comfortable speaking English. Most students were not used to working in teams. This experience allowed them to put aside their personal differences to focus on the tasks at hand. For a lot of students, Marketplace became a first hand experience to overcome interpersonal conflicts and focus on business. Sharon described the students as “wholly engaged, delighted, and absorbed by the simulation”. She would meet with them after each quarter of play for a debriefing where they would tell her what went well, what went wrong, and what they were planning on doing in the following quarter. Once the simulation was over, Sharon also asked for them to debrief the rest of the class on what they had learned and what they would have done differently. Students also had to write a paper to the director of the program. Finally, because one of the students’ main requirements for graduation from the program is to write a very detailed business plan, using the Marketplace simulation was a great way for them to be exposed to strategic business thinking, the integration of functional areas, and entrepreneurial challenges. Overall, the Marketplace simulations opened the students’ eyes to the challenges of international business and the criticality of customer focus. Sharon found a striking difference between her American students and her Tunisian students. Because of their engineering background, her Tunisian students focused more on statistics and numerical results. They appeared to be less comfortable with softer issue, the opposite of her American students. The program was so well received that Sharon was asked to train two Tunisian faculty members in order for them to take over and teach it as a regular course. The University of Tunis al-Manar has recently acquired three years worth of licenses to continue the program via a government grant, subsidized by the State Department ALO grant program, which supports the relationship. Tennessee State University is committed to assist the Tunisian faculty as they develop support materials and also translate others provided through Marketplace into French. This program has been one of the most successful features of TSU’s collaboration with the University of Tunis al-Manar.
Marketplace Community Newsletter, issued quarterly. www.marketplace-simulation.com |
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