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CHAPTER 5
RESEARCH FINDINGS: QUALITATIVE RESULTS
This chapter presents the qualitative results acquired from classroom observation as well as semi-structured interviews. Semi-structured interview data were obtained from two teachers, nine MBA students, and five IMBA students at the target national university. In the following sections, results combining classroom observation with semi-structured interviews are reported.
Profiles of the Programs
Although the MBA and IMBA programs are both administered by the Department and Graduate Institute of Business Administration, they have diverse goals and operations. Since the qualitative data obtained revolved around the status quo of how EAP was applied, it is necessary to elaborate on the profiles and
admission requirements of the MBA and IMBA programs in advance, as the issues raised were centered on these regulations.
Profiles and Admission Requirements of the MBA Program
The MBA program was established in 1992. The fundamental principles of the MBA program were: (1) to cultivate transnational management personnel with an international perspective which involves understanding the Taiwanese, mainland China, and Asian markets, and (2) to cultivate cross-cultural virtues in the students, according to the online introduction of the program. Moreover, these management
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personnel must possess professional ethics, business ethics, and concerns for the community. In order to recruit students from different fields, three kinds of backgrounds were set up as a prerequisite—engineering, foreign languages, and business.
The MBA program adopted two channels of admission—recommendation and screening, and entrance exam. Whichever channel it was, three groups of students would be included, namely, Group A—Engineering (GA-En), Group B—Foreign Language (GB-Fl), and Group C—Business (GC-Bu). For the channel of
recommendation and screening, document evaluation accounted for 40%, a general English written exam 20%, and an oral exam 40%. For the channel of entrance exam, however, students would be tested for different subjects depending on their
backgrounds. For GA-En, English accounted for 40%, while either Calculus or Statistics, depending on students’ choice, accounted for 60%. For GB-Fl, English accounted for 60%, and Introduction to Management, 40%. For GC-Bu, English accounted for 40%, and Statistics, 60%. If a student failed to reach the average scores in general English, they had to take English courses after being officially accepted into the program. In the academic year of 2008, for MBA students who took the channel of entrance exam, after passing the written exam described above, an oral exam would be required. In other words, MBA students had to pass the written exam on different subjects in order to take the oral exam. However, the oral exam for MBA students was cancelled in 2009.
The following figure displayed the admission procedures and regulations for the MBA program:
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Figure 5.1. MBA Admission Procedures and Requirements.
Profiles and Admission Requirements of the IMBA Program
The IMBA program was officially established in the academic year of 2009. The program was mainly set up to recruit foreign students who were interested in entering Asian markets, particularly the mainland China market. Therefore, the program emphasized that courses would be conducted in English. However, the program also accepted 15 Taiwanese students. The ideal goal was to recruit three-fourths of foreign
Admission Channels
Recommendation and screening Entrance exam
GA-En:
Document evaluation 40%
General English 20%
Oral exam 40% (in English for GB-Fl; in Chinese for GA-En
& GC-Bu)
Oral exam (only for the 2008 academic year; in English for GB-Fl; in Chinese for GA-En
& GC-Bu)
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students and one-fourth of Taiwanese students.
Since the IMBA program was originally designed for foreign students, English abilities, especially for Taiwanese students, took a big part on the entrance exam. For Taiwanese students, only one channel of admission was adopted—entrance exam.
Upon admission, students had to pass the written exam prior to taking the oral exam.
According to the online admission regulations, the written exam accounted for 60% of the total admission scores. It included exams on two subjects—General English and Introduction to Management, each accounting for 30% of the total admission scores.
If students failed to reach the average scores in General English, they also had to take English courses after being officially accepted into the program. Once being informed of passing the written exam, students could then take part in the English oral exam which accounted for 40% of the total admission scores. In short, General English on the written exam, along with the English oral exam, accounted for 70% of the total admission scores. For Taiwanese students in the IMBA program, there were no limitations upon Taiwanese students’ previous backgrounds, unlike the MBA admission regulations which included three background limitations—Engineering, Foreign Languages, and Business. The following figure displayed the admission procedures and regulations for the MBA program:
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Figure 5.2. IMBA Admission Procedures and Requirements.
Graduation Regulations
This section introduces graduation regulations for both MBA and IMBA programs, including preparatory courses, credits, and graduation requirements.
Preparatory Courses
In order for the students who did not have business-related backgrounds to gain basic knowledge in Accounting, Statistics, and Economics, both MBA and IMBA students must take Accounting, Statistic Method & Data Analysis, and Economics courses, unless they could provide credit waivers. Although the credits taken from these preparatory courses would not be included in the graduation credits, they must be fulfilled in order to graduate.
For the 2008 academic year, the three preparatory courses were offered during the summer vacation—before the semester officially started in September. Nonetheless, there were no such arrangements during the summer vacation before the starting of the 2009 academic year.
Admission Channel: Entrance exam
Written exam 60%:
General English 30%
Introduction to Management 30%
English oral exam 40%
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Credits
There were five core domains of Management in Business Administration—
Industry, Marketing, Human Resources, Research and Development, and Finance. For both MBA and IMBA students, a minimum of 48 credits were demanded for
graduation, including 6 credits from their Master’s thesis. In other words, students were required to take 42 credits, of which 27 credits must be taken from their respective programs. Credits gained for courses taken from different programs, departments, colleges, or universities should not exceed 15 credits. For example, when an IMBA student took a course offered by MBA, the credits would be included in the 15-credit limit, and vice versa.
However, for MBA students, there were only two required courses, which accounted for 6 credits; for IMBA students, there were five required courses, which accounted for 15 credits. In other words, MBA students had 36 elective credits to take, and IMBA, 27.
To assist MBA students to choose their majors, seven elective courses were also listed as “required-elective” courses, which meant that these courses were in fact required courses, except being listed online as “elective.” The seven courses were Marketing Management, Financial Management, Organization Management, Human Resources Management, Operations Management, Information Management, and International Business Management. Nevertheless, if MBA students had taken any of these specific courses during their undergraduate studies, they could apply to waive the courses in the MBA program. However, they had to take another course in the same domain to fulfill the credit requirements.
Therefore, after the MBA students took the “required-elective” courses, they had to choose their majors—one out of seven, namely, Marketing Management,
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Organization/Human Resources Management, Strategy/General Management,
International Business Management, Technology Management, Financial/Accounting Management, and Information Management, in their second year. Once the major was chosen, three courses from that domain must be taken.
Moreover, undergraduate students with the official transcript proving their good performance in classes were also allowed to take one to two courses in graduate programs. Such a case had existed in the class which the researcher observed. The following table displayed the credits required by the MBA and IMBA programs:
Table 5.1
Credit Requirements of MBA and IMBA Programs
MBA 48 credits
42 credits:
courses
6 credits: 2 required courses 36 credits
21 credits: 7 required-selective courses for the 1st-year students 15
credits:
selective courses
9 credits: 3 courses in the chosen major domain
6 credits: 2 selective courses 6 credits: Master’s thesis
IMBA 48 credits
42:
courses
15 credits: 5 required courses
27 credits: selective courses (including 15-creit limits for courses taken outside of IMBA program) 6 credits: Master’s thesis
For the MBA students, the 2 required, 7 required-selective, and 3 selective courses as their major had already taken up 36 credits, which left only 6 credits for students to take other selective courses.
In terms of the EMCs offered in the academic year of 2008 for the MBA program, 4 such courses were offered. For the academic year of 2009, 5 EMCs were
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offered in the MBA program, in which 2 of them were regular courses that had been offered in 2008. On the other hand, 9 EMCs were offered in the IMBA program in the academic year of 2009; however, 4 of them were jointly given by both MBA and IMBA programs. The following table displayed how EMCs were offered in the MBA and IMBA programs in the academic years of 2008 and 2009.
Table 5.2
EMCs Offered in MBA and IMBA in Academic Years of 2008 & 2009 Academic
Year Program Numbers of EMCs Offered
2008 MBA 4
2009 IMBA & MBA (Jointly offered)
4 (including 1 EMC also offered in 2008 for MBA students)
MBA 1 (also offered in 2008)
IMBA 5
As stated earlier, when an MBA student took a course offered by IMBA, the credits would be included in the 15-credit limit, and vice versa.
Graduation Requirements
There were four categories for graduation requirements. Both MBA and IMBA students must choose two out of the first three categories of activities—Management Practice, Academic, and Language-Related Activities, and fulfill one activity within that category. However, the fourth category—Participation in Speeches must exceed at least 70% for the 2008 academic year, and 85% for 2009. These regulations were to substitute the original requirement of the qualifying exam. Furthermore, according to the regulations and students’ statements, the Oral Test for Thesis Proposal was not required as long as students fulfilled the graduation requirements. However, the Oral
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Test for Thesis was still required.
As to the regulation regarding the language used for writing the thesis, the official language required was Chinese, for both MBA and IMBA students in the 2008 and 2009 academic years. However, students were encouraged to write their theses in English.
Regardless of the demanding requirements, both MBA and IMBA students graduated in two years. A form was designed for the department to examine students’
completion of the MBA/IMBA programs, as shown in Table 5.3:
Table 5.3
Checklist for Graduation Requirements
Categories Activity Items Check
Brief description internship (over a month)
★Other activities with prior application & consent II. Academic
Activities
★Annual conferences from associations (or equivalent to the ones with review mechanism)
Conferences on business cases
Master’s Thesis Award
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Categories Activity Items Check
Brief description
★Overseas studies (over a month)
IV.
Participation in Speeches
Participation in speeches held by the department, at least 70% (2008)/85%
(2009) of the time Student’s
Signature
Advisor’s Signature Program Director’s Signature
Note. ★ = Applications need to be proposed to the departmental office in advance, and approved by the Chair.
There were four activities listed in Category I—Management Practice Activities, namely, two kinds of competitions held by different organizations, summer overseas internship, and other activities. For the competitions other than the named
competitions listed on the table, students had to apply to the departmental office and gain approval from the Chair in advance. They also needed to prove their efforts in attending these competitions in order to fulfill the duty.
The second category was regarding Academic Activities, including publications in academic conferences and Master’s Thesis Award. However, the papers for
submission were not restricted to English. The third category was related to language, including obtaining certificates for different levels of English proficiency tests and
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attending overseas studies. English proficiency tests included GEPT (the General English Proficiency Test) held by The Language Training & Testing Center (LTTC) in Taiwan, TOEIC, TOEFL, IELTS, and so on, according to the official foreign language proficiency standards set for civil servants in Taiwan.
Overseas studies required students to audit courses in overseas partner
universities. Although official departmental policy required overseas studies to last for over a month, the length of time which students could visit the universities in fact depended on the terms of cooperation from both departments. Students did not have to pay tuition fees to the overseas universities since they could only audit the courses for a short period of time. The department would announce the total amount of fees for each overseas trip as well as the amount of the grant being funded to students.
Students then decided whether they would like to or could afford to take the trip for overseas studies. If students wished to gain official credits for attending the overseas courses, the MBA program provided a course entitled Seminar for International Management for students to officially gain the credits. Besides auditing courses in overseas universities, field trips to industries would also be arranged by the overseas universities.
In sum, there were five main differences existing in the MBA and IMBA programs in terms of the domains, admission regulations, and graduation
requirements: (1) the MBA program contained a broad domain, while the IMBA program focused on international business administration, particularly on Asian markets, (2) MBA had two admission channels, while IMBA only had one, (3) MBA recruited students from three backgrounds, while IMBA did not impose such limits, (4) English scores upon the admission accounted for a much higher proportion for MBA GB-Fl students and IMBA students than the other MBA students, and (5) MBA students had to earn 27 required and required-selective credits, while IMBA students
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had to earn 15.
Findings of Research Question One:
Perceptions of Academic Curriculum Design
The following sections present results for the teachers’ and both MBA and IMBA students’ perceptions of the status quo towards the academic curriculum design.
Teachers’ Perceptions of Academic Curriculum Design
The curriculum design in this study adopted a broad definition, ranging from the overall rationale for the EAP program, the intention of planning, the procedures adopted for the implementation, students’ actual experiences, and the “‘hidden learning’ that occurs as a by-product of the organization” (Kelly, 1989, as cited in Richards & Renandya, 2002, p. 70). Five issues were reported by the teachers concerning curriculum design, namely, status quo of EAP implementation, EMCs, teachers for the EMCs, teacher training, and extracurricular activities and TA system.
Status Quo of EAP Implementation
The concept of embedding English teaching in their curriculum design was initiated by Dr. B, and ever since then, the department has been trying to include English teaching in their curriculum design:
There has been a set of long-term, stable, gradual strategies embedded in our Department and Graduate Institute of Business Administration for implementing English teaching, starting with the elective courses. . . . So later on, starting from about 7 or 8 years ago in our graduate programs, we originated the recruitment of students from foreign language backgrounds, setting it as a group—the first innovation in Taiwan. (Dr. B)
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The status quo of MBA and IMBA programs in curriculum design was also described by Dr. B as follows:
We encouraged MBA students to take IMBA courses, and also welcomed IMBA students to take MBA courses. So basically, their elective courses are the same;
only core courses are different. We teachers do our best to teach the IMBA core courses in English. However, if they go take the MBA courses which are not conducted in English, we also…[accept] because there are many programs in our department. Moreover, unlike other programs, Department and Graduate Institute of Business Administration emphasizes wholeness, integration, and diversity of knowledge, too. (Dr. B)
In addition, Dr. B also reported on the cooperation with the Business
Communication Program from the Department of Applied Foreign Languages in order for students to have more options in taking courses, especially for the IMBA foreign students:
If we recruit foreign students and hope that they can graduate in two years like our students, do we have enough English-medium courses for them to graduate?
I once consulted this with the Chair of the Department of Applied Foreign Languages. We hoped that students from the Business Communication Program and our students could take courses from each other’s program, and we could officially approve these credits. (Dr. B)
Besides the difference in the MOI for core courses in IMBA, Dr. B explained that, in general, there were three curriculum frameworks in the MBA program, namely, function, industry, and environment. Function was related to management, industry concerned knowledge, and environment involved knowledge of international environment. However, the focus for IMBA was different from that of MBA:
In fact, our IMBA core courses basically belong to the part of international environment. Besides the courses being conducted in English, many of our IMBA core courses are related to economy and emerging markets. (Dr. B)
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Dr. A described the differences in goal establishment between MBA and IMBA programs:
The goal of IMBA was originally set up mainly for foreign students; Taiwanese students are the secondary concern. . . . The main scheme of the whole
curriculum design is based on international business, Taiwan, Asian small and medium-sized enterprises, and Asian-style management. Because the main goal is for foreign students to know Asian-style management or Asian business and companies in our IMBA, of course the planning of IMBA and MBA are different. . . . So, all courses in IMBA are conducted in English. (Dr. A)
The overall goal for the graduate programs were employment-oriented, as Dr. B asserted, “We emphasized students’ employability, so I hope that they have enough competitiveness in the workplace.”
In order to implement the EAP curriculum, the MBA program started to recruit students from three kinds of backgrounds—engineering, foreign languages, and business. There even seemed to be an increase of students enrolling from the foreign language group, according to Dr. A:
Although we are Graduate Institute of Business Administration, we all hope to have interdisciplinary students from different backgrounds. An engineering undergraduate may also hope to have management training to help him pursue future development in his career. So, three groups were set up as a prerequisite during enrollment. Some are from the engineering field, while a second group is [students possessing] foreign language abilities, because our [current] business field, even in the future, demands personnel with foreign language abilities. The third group, of course, covers students from the traditional business-related fields. In fact, there are more students from the second group—foreign language abilities. (Dr. A)
Dr. B also stated the causes and benefits of recruiting English undergraduates, for
Dr. B also stated the causes and benefits of recruiting English undergraduates, for