Validation and Adjustment of Instruments and Processes to Evaluate English-Medium Education in the International Business Administration programme in the Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH Business School
At a glance
- Project leader : Prof. Dr. Patrick Studer
- Co-project leader : Paul Kelly
- Project team : Ivan Al-Azm, Prof. Ross Bennie, Claudia Bärtschi, Prof. Jacqueline Bürki, Prof. Valerie Faminoff Mangold, Dr. Aisha Siddiqa, Dr. Claudia Vogel
- Project budget : CHF 40'000
- Project status : completed
- Funding partner : Public sector (excl. federal government) (Berner Fachhochschule BFH)
- Project partner : Berner Fachhochschule BFH
- Contact person : Patrick Studer
Description
The BFH Business School offers a Bachelor of Science in International Business Administration degree programme in English. This programme is continuously developed and adapted to emerging needs and trends. One key element of the programme’s quality is its use of English as a medium of instruction. The change of medium of instruction is a significant factor in that it impacts the linguistic, communicative and didactic quality of teaching and learning. In order to be able to evaluate the impact the change of medium instruction has on the quality of the International Business Administration programme, BFH Business School has commissioned ZHAW School of Applied Linguistics to further validate and, where necessary, adjust evaluation instruments and processes previously developed by ZHAW School of Applied Linguistics in collaboration with BFH Business School and other international partners. The conceptual basis of the evaluation procedure is openly accessible in Studer (2018).
The present project involves the following goals:
- To identify elements of the IBA programme that contribute to, or detract from, the realisation of the goals of an international programme in a UAS, with particular focus on the English-medium instruction aspect;
- To collect and analyse data for the ongoing validation and refinement of evaluation instruments and processes as described in Studer (2018);
- To potentially expand the existing set of instruments to account for emerging needs and trends in the internationalisation of curricula;
- To train BFH staff in the application of the instruments by involving them in data collection and analysis;
- To explore options for inter-university consortium certification of English-medium instruction programmes.