Advice for effective teaching in higher education in emerging markets

Earlier in the month we held a professional development workshop at the Academy of Management in Philadelphia. The title of the workshop was "Contextualization of Learning about Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets" and we were first up on the first day - Session 29 of nearly 2,000 sessions... (read the blog post for the first part of the workshop here: Contextualizing Learning

Aside from the five cases of best practises from Africa, the Middle East, India and Russia we asked for each of our panelists to provide their advice for effective teaching in the Middle East. The following is a list of their advice:

Stephen Mezias (INSEAD):

• Each class/session needs to begin with a list of goals and what will be done with learners, so that we do not impose our Western ways of thinking.

Kathy Shen (University of Wollongong in Dubai):

• Don't take contextualisation and the differences between genders [e.g. in gender segregated classrooms] for granted - students in Dubai behave much the same way as students in Hong Kong.

Amitaksha Nag (Frametrics Consulting):

• Defining problems well is critical - metaphors are cross-cultural, but can be viewed in many different ways. 

Alexander Fliaster (University of Bamberg):

• An educator's role is to help teach the importance of context within organisations, and that innovation and entrepreneurship are about interactions between collaborations.

Victor Huang (Zayed University, Abu Dhabi):

• Today's Generation V learners benefit from social media platforms where they can learn and share with fellow learners.

Finally, from the audience was a closing remark - in our search for contextualization and bespoke education we cannot forget that there are universal values and concepts that are valuable to keep in mind when teaching any group, on any continent.