INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MBA: 1st CLASS

I attended 1st class of IB on 25/Oct/08. Only a dozen of people attending this class.
We discussed a lot on the format of this course including course description, references (the main textbook will be puechased later - it is good for my future reference), teaching methods, and assessment. For the assessment, it is involving:

i) Attendance and class participation. The lecturer is expecting us to talk and give ideas or examples in the class. 10%

ii) Case study. The case will be given later on. We have to work on one individual case (not required to present) and one group case (required to be presented and submitted). I teamed up with another 3 females (including one female ASP). 20%

iii) Forum report and presentation - group work. The subject matter will be informed later by the lecturer. 25%

iv)Journal article review - individual job 15%. Required to pick up new articles (2 or 3 years age) from reputable journal (list of reputable journal was provided).

It is interesting to learn that there is a software to check on plagiarism --> www.turnitin.com/static/index.html

Course Description:
The internal dimension (changes in comparative and competitive advantage, integration of markets and globalization, government policies) is becoming increasingly important for business activities within Asia and worldwide. The aim of this course is to provide an understanding of the strategies pursued by firms, and the factors underlying their competitiveness in an international context.

During first class, we covered Topic 1 --> International business (in general) and the globalization of the world economy. I though my experience was already international (since my department is arranging shipment and receiving goods from worlwide), but it was still not enough since we dealt with most of the international sales office worldwide (not actually end custtomer) and most of the regulations have been fixed earlier. The lecturer also discussed on WTO and related FTA like CEPT, NAFTA, Japan & Malaysia FTA (Malaysia to enter Japan 'high quality' algriculture market) and flexible working hours by some of MNCs including Nestle (one student from Nestle) etc. 2 students from Customs Putrajaya.