In my self assessment, I said I wanted to be able to take something back to the company I work for to help with training new customers in Central and South America. I got perspective on the troubles a foreign expatriate might experience when visiting the USA. What I will be able to bring to the company I work for will actually be related to hiring people from overseas. I will be able to prepare a set of tips for hiring foreigners since training the existing employees how they could improve their interactions with a new employee, will help the new employee adapt and be more successful.

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A recurring training practice I noticed was a self-awareness goal. One thing I expected to see a lot of in this course was content on specific differences between major cultures. None of the research or our class discussion seemed to emphasize reading pamphlets of differences between cultures. I can recommend when companies send employees overseas they should send people with the best ability to adapt to a different environment, not necessarily the person with the highest technical expertise, as is the common practice. As I said in assignment 2, by getting training participants to know they will have to make an effort to observe, internalize, and adapt to new host cultures, as expatriates, they will be much better off. Experiential learning methods seemed to be the best way to create adaptive expatriates

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I know using surveys or assessments to screen expatriate candidates can improve success in the host environment. An obvious training tip I hadn't thought of before this class is the importance of language training for expatriates planning on making a long-term commitment. The class discussion about the importance of educators in Asia was enlightening. I would have liked to have tried out a cross-cultural training workshop like I found in Delany-Barmann and Minner's 1996 publication from assignment 2 without knowing what the workshop was beforehand.

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This was the first class I actually had to use the university's online, library, journal, search system. It didn't help me with using a search engine so much as it just got me familiar with resources I haven't used before. I also realized during this semester the type of assignments I created for this class can be part of an online portfolio of research. After the end of last semester, the files I posted to my WebCT site were deleted. By putting the files on my website, I can keep them as a reference for myself and for Google searches. I don't think I'm the only person that has finished a class only later to realize 3 months later I did a brain wash of 70% of the things I learned earlier.

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The biggest part of the course I will take away isn't directly related to cross-cultural training. I will be able to apply the class discussion regarding the evaluation of training design with proper linking of objectives to assessment.

Doing the research to find information on cross-cultural training was informative, however I would have liked to had more professor-recommended cross-cultural training advice. Instead of assignment 5, I would have rather had a face-to-face meeting for professor-recommended training. I didn't feel like I got a lot out of assignment 5 or the class discussion.

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Each assignment was time consuming enough to take place of a class meeting to justify the mixed-mode design of the course. I can't speak for everyone, but it took me, give or take, 6 hours to complete each assignment from the time I started researching to when I posted the report. I'm sure I absorbed some information from all the publications I wasn't able to use as references. If the assignments were easier, I would say there should be a face-to-face meeting instead of skipping a class. I would expect if I took the class again to have to do similar research and report writing.

Next time, have the class meet on days where we wouldn't have to miss for Memorial Day. I missed the class time.

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Questions posed during class discussion to use where commonly, "did anyone else find something like that," but think I the most active discussion during class was when there was disagreement. I think tossing more hypothetical and devils's advocate type comments into the discussion would get more people to freely reference their research to defend their thoughts.