Investigating the International Awareness of StudentsMeeting Their International Dimension Requirementthrough Course Offerings in a College of Agriculture

摘要

Many U.S. universities are preparing their students to attain international awareness through variousapproaches. The College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources (CASNR) at Oklahoma StateUniversity offers three international dimension undergraduate courses intended to provide students aformal educational opportunity to learn about international issues in agricultural and natural resourcescontexts. The investigation was a non–experimental, pretest–posttest descriptive and comparative designstudy. The target population (N = 147) consisted of all undergraduate students enrolled in threeinternational dimension courses during the Fall semester of 2010. The study’s findings revealed thatstudents’ attitudes regarding CASNR’s role in developing their international awareness as well asgeneral awareness of the impact of international issues and globalization on the agriculture sectorchanged favorably from pre course to post course. These results showed statistically significantdifferences (p < .05) in students’ attitudes. Comparing students’ attitudes, from pre course to post course,revealed that the international dimension courses studied did impact students’ views related to aspects ofenhanced international awareness, including the agriculture sector and their college’s role therein. Theattitudes of students who participate in international dimension courses can change positively if U.S.universities internationalize their curricula adequately.