Anderson School of Management Professor of Strategic Management Doug Thomas is teaching UNM’s first bilingual MOOC, International Business I, taught in English and Spanish.
“It is really important that students be aware that they have the ability to start a business across borders, wherever they are living. And so we show them a lot of data about rates of entrepreneurship across borders and some of the challenges that exist.”
In the course he points students to micro financing resources. He shows them learning resources so they can start a one or two person company by learning programming languages online for free, then building an app that can go into a global apps store. The students set up forums, and the discussions are often lively because there is sometimes a great contrast between the theory of how a business environment should work and the reality for the students.
“That’s the promise of Coursera. This is free education that maybe people don’t have access to for traditional higher education because of money, responsibility, caste systems or whatever. But they can expose themselves to ideas through courses like this and spark something that will set them on a journey that will hopefully change their life,” says Thomas. He is passionate about the opportunities provided by the international business community and wants to ignite that passion in others.