International Business Theatre (IBT) : an alternative evaluation method for enhancing student learning in international marketing

This paper describes and documents a new method (International Business Theatre, IBT) for evaluating university students studying the subject International Marketing and reports on qualitative research used to explore the effectiveness of IBT as an evaluation method. IBT involves forming students into ‘theatre troupes’, randomly assigning each ‘troupe’ a country of study, then getting students to do country research with a view to writing and performing a play that integrates subject theory and highlights key aspects of doing business with that country. Plays, which are assessed for content and form, are scheduled for tutorial classes towards the end of the semester. Interpretive research was conducted using a sentence completion technique with 10 randomly selected undergraduate students in the subject International Marketing offered at the Blacktown Campus of the University of Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia in 1998. Conclusions drawn from the preliminary study are that IBT makes student learning more enjoyable and interesting, exposes students to a more beneficial and alternative form of evaluation, stimulates student learning, encourages student creativity and develops student confidence in public speaking.