Engaging Industry in the Business Curriculum in Hong Kong

Universities in Australia engage with industry to develop creative and current curriculum, provide networking and mentoring opportunities and enhance students’ employability skills and their transition into the workforce. Like many Australian universities, Victoria University (VU) in Melbourne encourages industry engagement in business curriculum through accreditation and industry representation on Course Advisory Groups. VU also encourages the involvement of industry experts in the delivery of the business curriculum to enhance the student learning experience. Apart from work placement s and internships , typical industry participation in business curriculum involves industry guest speakers, industry representatives providing feedback to students on project b riefs or presentations and students attending field trips and tours of businesses . One mandatory unit in VU’s Business degrees, Professional Development 3: Leadership and Challenge (PD3), has multiple points of engagement with industry over the course of t he unit. This is a multi - disciplinary capstone unit that makes extensive use of industry adjunct facilitators and/or external partners to support students working on ‘real’ business challenges and projects. Professional Development 3 is also offered in V U’s business degrees offshore at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CU HK ) and Sunway University College (Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru). This paper will consider transnational quality issues in the delivery of PD3 in Hong Kong. It will describe the indust ry engagement achieved in the first delivery of PD3 in Hong Kong in 2010. Teaching staff from CUHK and VU will consider the comparability of the learning experience for VU’s students and evaluate industry engagement in the unit based both on their own perc eptions and industry feedback