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Journal of Education for Business

ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20

An Innovative Approach to the Design and
Implementation of an International Finance Field
Study Course
Kevin Wynne & Ronald W. Filante
To cite this article: Kevin Wynne & Ronald W. Filante (2004) An Innovative Approach to
the Design and Implementation of an International Finance Field Study Course, Journal of
Education for Business, 79:6, 354-359, DOI: 10.3200/JOEB.79.6.354-359
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/JOEB.79.6.354-359

Published online: 07 Aug 2010.

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INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

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An Innovative Approach to the
Design and Implementation of an
International Finance Field Study
Course
KEVIN WYNNE
RONALD W. FILANTE
Pace University
Pleasantville, New York

I

nternationalization of the business
curriculum has long been perceived as
a crucial objective for many institutions
of higher education. Kwok, Folks, and
Arpan (1994) noted that the American
Assembly of Collegiate Schools of
Business (AACSB) essentially mandated as early as 1974 that international
topics be covered in accredited business
schools. In this article, we present an
innovative teaching approach that is
applied to international topics through
an undergraduate finance field study
course. We also discuss leading edge
technologies that have become available
to the mass academic audience in the
past few years. The course is for 3 credits with a field trip component of
approximately 8 days at the end of the

semester. The first two field trips in
2000 and 2001 were to London. The
2002 field trip was to Dublin and London, and the 2003 trip was to Paris and
London.
In a survey, Kwok, Folks, and Arpan
(1994) found that 78% of European
business schools and 51% of American
schools included specific references to
global objectives in their mission statement. The first line of the Mission Statement for the Lubin School of Business
at Pace University states: “The Mission
of the Lubin School of Business is to
prepare students for successful business
careers in a global economy.” The state-

354

Journal of Education for Business

ABSTRACT. Internationalization of
a business school curriculum has long

been an important objective of
AACSB-accredited schools in the
United States. During the past 4 years,
the authors of this article have developed, taught, and guided an undergraduate finance field study course
that has incorporated trips to London,
Dublin, and Paris. In this article, they
provide guidelines for the design of an
international finance field study
course and the application of digital
technologies to assist in content delivery. The hybrid course combines conventional classroom lectures, innovative applications of streaming media,
and a field study component. The
authors contend that other institutions
can readily adopt this design if they
have the necessary technological
infrastructure.

ment goes on to note that the school has
“partnerships with business organizations and academic institutions domestically and internationally, providing
opportunities for qualified students of
diverse talents, interests, experiences,

and origins.” We believe that the International Finance Field Study course at
Pace is consistent with the overall mission statement of the business school
and helps foster these objectives. It has
also been one of the most heavily
attended field study courses within the
entire university.
The university has multiple campuses,
and students from any of the campuses

are eligible to participate in the field
study course. Location considerations
and scheduling became issues that needed innovative solutions, which we review
in this article. The design of the field
study course can be adopted readily by
other institutions, provided they have the
necessary technological infrastructure.
Review of the Academic
Literature
There is extensive academic literature devoted to international business
(IB) and how it can and should be

incorporated into an academic curriculum. Webb, Mayer, and Pioche (1997)
conducted a survey study and found
that approximately 49% of AACSBaccredited schools and 33% of schools
not accredited by the AACSB were
offering international business courses
in 1996. This figure has undoubtedly
increased since that survey was conducted. Voris (1997) found that
employers view an international background as an important element in hiring. According to Ball and McCulloch
(1993), however, most U.S. CEOs did
not expect the international component
to be taught in a conventional classroom environment. Reynolds and Rice
(1988) also found that American companies did not have a high expectation
that international business activities

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would be covered adequately in the traditional classroom setting. Fugate and
Jefferson (2001) noted that it is essential that business, government, and educational institutions work together to
upgrade the internationalization of the
business school curriculum. This

process cannot be achieved in isolation,
and a significant contribution to the
success of the course discussed in this
article has been the active participation
of the business community.
In a finding that encouraged the
development of this article, Reynolds
and Rice (1988) identified international
finance as a major academic discipline
that readily lends itself to global applications.1 Rogers (1999) discussed the
importance of technological innovation
in influencing the research and teaching
of international business. He noted that
distance technologies have influenced
almost all aspects of teaching and
research in a global environment. Smith
and Duus (2001) reiterated this point by
noting that conventional pedagogy is
not necessarily transferable to an innovative technological approach. Cordell
(2001) discussed the merits of innovative pedagogy and field visitation in an

article on international business planning in an MBA capstone course. Mariola and Manley (2002) investigated the
teaching of finance with a distance education approach, and Spinelli (2001)
discussed the use of new technologies to
teach business statistics.
Bailey (1995) noted that the international program at the University of
Hawaii emphasizes relevant curricula
and learning opportunities to prepare
students for a global business environment. Bailey argued that an important
component of the success of the program is that faculty members have international experience and relevant
research in the field. In a survey study
of multinational executives, Webb,
Mayer, Pioche, and Allen (1999) found
that approximately 75% of the respondents felt that faculty foreign exchange
programs were either very important or
important in developing an international
business program.
Beamish and Calof (1989) surveyed
122 major Canadian corporations and
found that the executives felt that international business education and training

are more effective after the individuals
have some experience. Douglas and
Jones-Rikkers (2001) performed an
empirical analysis on the relationship
between study abroad programs (SAPs)
and “American student world mindedness.” The students that participated in
the SAP had a stronger sense of world
mindedness. World mindedness can
lead CEOs to hire more foreign students, purchase more foreign products,
and manage a diverse workforce more
effectively. Douglas and Jones-Rikkers
(2001) also found that the more diverse
the host country from the students’ point
of origin, the greater the crosscultural
interaction.
Course Design
The design of an international field
study course is the element most crucial
to its success. Henthorne, Miller, and
Hudson (2001) noted that the development of a successful study abroad

course requires certain key factors, such
as a professor of record, the securing of
lecturers, introductory lectures, and the
covering of program costs. In this article, we address all of these key elements. Our university policy mandates
the number of student contact hours that
must be met to conform to a 3-credit
course. Because of the structure and
nature of the International Finance Field
Study course, these requirements were
satisfied in a variety of forms. The

course is treated as an elective for
finance majors within the business
school.
The dean’s office developed an innovative pricing structure to make the
course more affordable for the students.
The university has a flat rate for fulltime students with credit loads between
12 and 18 credits per semester.
Although the majority of the lecture
contact hours are during the spring

semester, the course is not completed
until the first week in June. If the course
had been treated as a conventional summer course, it would have cost the students an additional $1,724 with the present tuition structure at the university.
Instead, any student carrying 15 or
fewer credits pays no additional registration fee. The air and rail travel, hotel,
and continental breakfast cost an additional $1,800 for the most recent trip to
London and Paris. Financial Management, a corporate finance course for
juniors, is required for the field study
course. In Table 1, we outline the finance major core requirements and
finance electives, which would be similar to those at many AACSB-accredited
business schools.
Classroom lectures on the outlined topics for the field study are held during the
6 weeks prior to travel. These lectures are
team taught and cover international
finance topics that students need for better comprehension of the overseas lecturers. We compiled comments gathered

TABLE 1. Finance Major Course Requirements
Course

Credits

Required
FIN 301 Financial Management (credits applied to business core)
FIN 320 Advanced Financial Analysis
FIN 351 Principles of Investment
FIN 358 International Finance
Elective
FIN 307 Managerial Finance
FIN 350 Global Money and Capital Markets
FIN 355 Portfolio Theory and Management
FIN 356 Options, Futures and Swaps
FIN 359 Principles of Fixed Income Instruments
FIN 394 Finance Internship
FIN 395 Independent Study
FIN 396J Student Managed Investment Portfolio
FIN 396L International Field Study to London and Paris
FIN 495 Lubin Leaders and Scholars Program: Senior Project in Finance

3
4
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Variable
Variable
3
3
3

July/August 2004

355

from students who participated in previous trips and distributed them to students
participating in recent trips. The field
study course has evolved to include the
introduction of more diverse cultures.
The language difference in France added
considerably to the cultural component of
the last field study trip.

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Innovative Technologies
Given the disparate locations of the
campuses, we needed innovative technologies to ensure the inclusion of the
students. The course used the Blackboard interface, a content distribution
network (CDN).2 Blackboard allows faculty members to upload assignments,
lecture notes, PowerPoint slides, video
files, and external links. These materials
are available to the students for asynchronous viewing. We initially used
HorizonLive, an outside vendor, to
stream live presentations to the students
via the Internet. Students had the option
to attend lectures in a classroom setting
with the faculty members or participate
via the Internet.3 An interesting feature of
the HorizonLive presentations was the
ability of off-site participants to hold
down the control key and ask the faculty
member questions through a microphone.4 The presentations also could be
stored for asynchronous viewing by the
students. One significant limitation to the
HorizonLive presentations was that they
could only stream PowerPoint slides.5
The next step in the evolution of the
course was a movement to internal
housing of the course content on the
university media server, which created
multiple options for the faculty members. Video-on-demand (VOD) became
an integral part of the field study
course.6 We developed video presentations to advertise the course to potential
students. In Figure 1, we provide an
example of a streaming media presentation using RealProducer. The promotional videos were developed in the fall
semester and uploaded to the Blackboard site of courses that we were
teaching. This method created effective
marketing and promotion of the course.
Although we have encouraged the students to share these videos with their
parents, such sharing has never been
documented. This sharing was viewed
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Journal of Education for Business

FIGURE 1. Video created with RealProducer and viewable asynchronously
by students.

FIGURE 2. Demonstration of a database using the screen capture software
called ScreenWatch.

as particularly important after the
tragedy of September 11, 2001.7 Numerous videos were developed during
the semester to inform the students of

meetings and logistical issues pertaining to the course. The university supports RealNetwork products, but almost
all of the same features are available

course, the Mimio feature gives the lecturer greater flexibility (see Figure 3).
The lecturer otherwise would consume
considerably more time converting
these equations and graphs to PowerPoint or a Word format. All of the applications discussed in this article can be
streamed from a media server via the
Internet or can be placed on a CD-ROM
for the students.

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Course Content

FIGURE 3. Example of using ScreenWatch in conjunction with a product
called Mimio, which allows for conversion of materials written on a whiteboard to digital video.

TABLE 2. Company and Institution Lecture Schedule
2000
Bank of England
Bloomberg, LLP
J. P. Morgan
Pepsico
Salomon Brothers
HSBC
Depository Trust
& Clearing Corp.

2001

2002

2003

Bank of England
Bloomberg, LLP
J. P. Morgan
Standard Bank
NASDAQ Europe
AIG

Bank of England
Bloomberg, LLP
J. P. MorganChase
Allied Irish Bank
NASDAQ Europe
AIG

Bank of England
Bloomberg, LLP
J. P. MorganChase
Microsoft
NASDAQ Europe
DeloitteTouche
Paris Bourse

through Windows Media, a Microsoft
product.
We added greater flexibility to the
course by incorporating screen capture
software. This system allows for the
entire computer screen to be captured
and converted into a video format and
viewed asynchronously by students via
the Internet. There are numerous types
of screen capture software; in this
course, we used ScreenWatch. Because
the course uses databases and statistics
extensively, the screen capture software
was particularly well suited for this type
of application. Using exchange rate and
equity return data of the host countries,

students could perform statistical analyses such as means, standard deviations,
correlation coefficients, and regression
analysis.8 We provide an application of
this form of technology in Figure 2.
The latest technological innovation in
the course has been the use of a Mimio
device, which produces an electronic
film on a conventional whiteboard that
is then captured on video. The lecturer
writes on a conventional white board,
and the presentation is captured for the
students with a video output of the presenter in the upper corner. Given the
significant amount of equations and
graphs in the content of a field study

As noted above, the course helps
strengthen students’ quantitative and
analytical skills through the use of databases and statistics. Through a recent
assessment tool given to the graduating
finance majors in the program, we
determined that many of our students
had difficulty in these quantitative areas.
We believe that the structure and format
of the course helps address some of the
deficiencies in these quantitative areas.
We also used screen capture videos that
instruct the students on how to use the
databases and manipulate basic statistical functions in Excel. A product on a
CD-ROM, Excel Essentials: Using
Microsoft Excel for Data Analysis and
Decision Making, is excellent for
demonstrating Excel functions using
screen capture applications with audio
instructions. We developed the screen
capture videos on the actual databases.
The coordinating of executive guest
lectures overseas has been a central
component of the international field
study course. Students complete assignments before their field trips to prepare
for these presentations. In Table 2, we
provide a list of the companies and institutions that we visited on the various
trips. Using our contacts and friends of
the university, we booked the speakers in
advance from the United States. Presentations have been given by the deputy
president of AIG Ireland, the head of
Strategic Implementation at Allied Irish
Bank, the research manager of NASDAQ Europe, and the controller of
Microsoft EMEA. These course presentations usually incorporate PowerPoint
slides and last approximately 60 to 90
minutes. Most presenters are gracious
enough to e-mail their presentations, so
that they are immediately available to
students when they return home to the
July/August 2004

357

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United States. The presentations are
uploaded to our Blackboard site, and the
students use them to study for the final
exam. None of the presenters receive
any remuneration, although they are provided tokens of gratitude such as pens
with the business school logo.
The presentations vary in scope and
content. For example, on a visit to AIG
in London, the presenters discussed a
new insurance product by which AIG
would assume some of the litigation
risk of a policyholder involved in a
merger or acquisition. As an example,
let us assume that company A wants to
buy company B, but there is pending
litigation against company B. AIG
would establish a cap amount and
therefore limit the potential damages
that company A could experience in the
merger or acquisition. Settlements over
the cap amount would be absorbed by
AIG. The payoff for AIG would be that
they would receive a substantial premium for absorbing the litigation risk
over the cap amount. Although it is a
relatively new product, the students
were able to see that AIG was in
essence writing an option on the litigation and that both companies would
benefit financially if the settlement
were below the established cap.
Another important component in the
course was the interplay between the
current political economy of Europe
and the challenges and choices made by
public and private decision makers. For
example, the Bank of England lecture
highlights the impact of ongoing European economic and political integration
on the “euro-sceptic” leadership of the
United Kingdom.9 Issues of sovereignty
and integration are played out in daily
meetings of the various national parliaments and the European Union’s political apparatus in Brussels. These
changes then set the stage for private
business decisions discussed by the presenters in lectures focusing on capital
budgeting, strategic planning, hedging,
and the marketing challenges that the
presenters confront.
Attendance at the presentations overseas is mandatory. The program averages approximately 20 students a year,
with six presentations per year. Thus far,
the program has had a 100% visitation
attendance by the students.10 This is a
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Journal of Education for Business

testament to the quality and commitment of the students and faculty members involved in the trip, as well as the
quality of the guest lecturers.
The dean’s office has encouraged faculty members to incorporate cultural
aspects into the field study course. The
students, who are normally engaged in
academic activities until approximately
3:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon, are
encouraged to visit museums, theaters,
and restaurants and go on sightseeing
tours. They are also welcome to accompany the faculty members as they visit
the various sites. Each year a greater
effort is made to foster the cultural
aspects of the trips. This indoctrination
begins in the United States; for example, before the students flew to Paris, a
French professor provided them with a
30-minute video on the various aspects
of French culture and history.

the academic literature refers to the fostering of world mindedness in students
through SAP courses. Informal discussions with previous participants signal
an increased desire to work or participate in their companies’ international
programs as a result of the field study
experience. The course is constantly
evolving, as evidenced by the introduction of basic French lessons to prepare
the students better for the next trip in
2004. The design and innovative technologies discussed in this article are
readily adaptable to most institutions
and should serve as a possible blueprint
to foster more international programs at
business schools.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the following individuals
for research assistance and comments: Margaret
Brennan, Lucille Kenny, Eileen Murphy, Medaline
Philphert, and two anonymous reviewers.

Discussion
NOTES

In today’s global economy, the inclusion of an international component in a
business curriculum is essential. In this
article, we outlined a process of incorporating new teaching technologies into
a well-designed international field study
course. The innovative technologies
allow for the teaching of a large number
of students in a multicampus setting.
The format of the course, both domestically and during the international trips,
fosters an intellectual environment and
exposes students to new cultural experiences. The quantitative element of the
course has been successful in addressing some of the areas of deficiency that
were identified in a departmental
assessment process. The use of executive lecturers overseas has enabled the
course to convey relatively sophisticated material to the students through the
personal business experiences and training of these international executives.
The rapidly advancing teaching technologies present many new opportunities for the growth and development of
international programs within the business curriculum. We plan to develop a
future area of research that will involve
sending surveys to the 80 participants in
the field study course in an effort to
determine the level of world mindedness generated by the course. Much of

1. International marketing was identified as
another discipline that lends itself to global topics.
2. Other types of CDNs are Angel, WebCT, and
e-college.
3. Students were required to attend a certain
percentage of the classroom lectures. Because of
potential scheduling conflicts, we alternated lecturing days and times to achieve this objective.
4. Students with high bandwidths were able to
view PowerPoint slides and receive audio and
video broadcasts. For students using a 56k
modem, the video portion of the presentation
could be suppressed.
5. We should note that not all the technologies
discussed in this article were used in the original
field study course. As the course has evolved, so
has the level of sophistication of applications used.
6. To view VOD presentations, the students must
have high bandwidth modems. Cable is available
extensively in the area, and students living on campus have access to high-speed connections in their
dorm rooms. In addition, there are numerous oncampus computer labs, as well as a finance lab, to
which students have access during the school year.
7. Although we anticipated a drop in enrollment
due to September 11, the spring 2002 student
enrollment remained at approximately 20, our
self-imposed limit.
8. We used the StockVal, Compustat, and CRSP
databases.
9. The term “euro-sceptic” is commonly used in
such publications as The Economist.
10. We should note that one student missed the
first presentation in Ireland, because the student
had planned in advance to graduate from the
downtown campus and fly over separately after
graduation.
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