The School of Management and Information Systems at Victoria University
Australian
res
ides
within
the
Business
Faculty and has a range of
M
anagement and
I
nformation
S
ystems degrees. In 2008 all
degree programs in the
Business F
aculty introduced a graduate
or generic skills compulsory subject
that focussed on problem
-
solving, cr
i
tical thinking,
communication
and teamwork.
This paper presents
an analysis of the challenges faced when delivering the
graduate/generic
skills
business
unit
into
an
Business
degree
into a
Malaysian University
College
.
Cultural, pedagogical, logistical, operational and
student perceptions are some of the challenges that must be assuaged when deploying new units.
Further t
his paper will present preliminary quantitative data to analyse
and identify key classroom
delivery challenges and then facilitator/student qualitative data to provide context and deeper
understanding
.
The challenges that arose in the rollout included; the need to customise programs into
culturally different destinatio
ns, the need to find and train facilitators that could deliver the graduate
skills
-
based activities
,
and the adoption of a team
-
based learning pedagogy with the commensurate
difficulty this type of pedagogy engender
s
in a teaching culture that is heavily r
eliant upon the
individual in its education system.
Suggestions for improving learning outcomes
are provided and
include the adoption of a
team
-
based learning pedagogy,
a focussed
student assessment rationale and
the develop
ment
of a
student lecturer trust
relationship.  -- 2011 ISECON (Information Systems Education Conference): Wilmington North Carolina