Description of the project: The first benefit of designing and offering a bilingual undergraduate business course is due to local and regional needs (in the RGV). Once the course is offered and taught, the enrolled students will have a competitive advantage over other monolingual business professionals.
o Contribution to decision-making and improvement processes
This work provides insights to institutional and college authorities on how to extend from one bilingual course currently offered to an extensive set of bilingual courses.
o Usefulness and cost-effectiveness
This bilingual course design and its enrichment with the bilingual COIL experience are cost-effective solutions for universities to develop communication skills in their students’ native and second languages.
Investment in a different learning management system (LMS) is not required for designing and teaching a bilingual course other than for the other courses.
o Use of specific examples, evidence, or indicators to demonstrate success
At the end of the course, an anonymous survey was conducted. The last question of this survey asked the students to list a maximum of 5 words that best describe their experience in taking a bilingual course. Some of the answers were:
• Novedoso, bueno, diferente, provechoso, participativo
• I felt more confident in participating in class discussions.
• Engaging, interesting, learning, fun, and different
• Refreshing, familiar, comfortable, great, enriching.
• Gratificante, retador, nuevas perspectivas, enriquecedor
• My experience taking a Bilingual course was very interesting and important in my career path as I have learned to work with different points of view and cultures.
• Would definitively do it again
o Hispanic focus
The 50 enrolled students in the bilingual business course were all Hispanic, as were the 30 South American College of Business students we hosted through Blackboard and Zoom.
o Lessons learned
I learned that bilingual courses were needed in the college business field.
Presenter:
Azucena Herrera is a Clinical Assistant Professor in Management at The College of Business and Entrepreneurship at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). She is an Ad-Hoc Reviewer for The Institute for Business and Finance Research. She has been a member of the International Journal of Management and Marketing Research (IJMMR) Editorial Board. She earned a master’s and Ph.D. in Business Management at Universidad La Salle and Instituto de Estudios Universitarios Mexico, respectively. Dr. Herrera was awarded the 2024 RCV College of Business and Entrepreneurship Faculty Excellence Award and the 2023 Excellence in Online Teaching Award at her university (UTRGV). She is an affiliated member of the B3 Institute (Bilingualism, Biculturality, and Biliteracy), a Diversity and Inclusion Educator, and a DREAM Zone Advocate (DACA) in The Center for Diversity and Inclusion at UTRGV. Her most recent research focuses on border studies, bilingualism, and diversity and inclusion competencies. She can be reached at azucena.herrera@utrgv.edu