The credits obtained in Singapore are used to map one of the two main subjects, as well as TOPSIM General Management. Accordingly, the 4th or 5th semester is ideally suited for a semester abroad.
Due to the tuition fees, the JCU requires four subjects to be selected and taken per trimester.
The JCU’s catalog of subjects is large and also offers many interesting subjects that the H-BRS does not offer. Fortunately, most subjects are easily recognized by the H-BRS.
One thing must be noted so that there are no nasty surprises: The JCU likes to change the curriculum shortly before the start of the semester, so that there can be overlaps. In extreme cases, the courses are omitted altogether (the subjects are presumably offered depending on student demand). It is therefore advisable to have a larger selection of possible subjects checked by Ms. Drügg in advance in order to be able to consider alternatives.
Since Singapore works with trimesters and not with semester periods, it can happen that either before the trimester or afterwards you have several months until the semester starts again at the H-BRS. This is a great opportunity to travel !!
Here are the trimester periods offered:
Trimester 1: March – June
Trimester 2: June – October
Trimester 3: October – February
6 Description of the courses attended
My most important lesson was that subjects can be chosen across trimesters, e.g. B. Subjects from the 1st and 6th trimester can be selected. Depending on the level, the levels of difficulty and the teaching and examination methods vary extremely! In general, the JCU would like to offer a homogeneous learning environment and attaches great importance to international teamwork.
6.1 Comment on students
As mentioned at the beginning, many of the local students are in Singapore against their will. This is most noticeable in teamwork. Solving group assignments in an internationally mixed group sounds exciting and varied, one would think. The only thing that is exciting is the lack of willingness to work on the part of team colleagues, who either do their part of the work with copy paste or not at all. This means that a motivated student has to approach “her” if you don’t want to do all the work alone.
Otherwise it is very nice to make international contacts and sometimes friendships even arise from group work.
For us, one of the absurd demands of the JCU is to rate its teammates on the basis of the percentage of work done at the end of a joint work. So it is possible, as a simple fellow student, to contribute to the fact that the fellow student falls through the entire course! This dependency of the mutual assessment (which, by the way, is included in the grade) ensures, at least in some groups, that the work is shared fairly.
6.2 Commentary on professors
The lecturers I met were all friendly and open people. The fact that the Asian teaching style restricts creativity or a straight line following of the imparted knowledge leads to success does, however, prove itself.
Learn more information about Singapore and Asia on sportsqna.
My lecturers worked very interactively, but only with students from Western countries, while the Asian fellow students sat largely passively and typed on their smartphones in the lectures.
6.3 Examination design
Most subjects consist of several components that add up to the final grade. These can be term papers, intermediate exams, presentations and the final exam. My final exams were consistently continuous text questions that had to be followed by the lecturer’s preferred method in order to get good grades. One should not underestimate the workload per subject! I seriously underestimated the 4 subjects (half of our German semester performance, I thought)! (The level of each subject also plays a role here).
6.4 My subjects
6.4.1 International Business
International Business was a general subject of business methodology. It is comparable to Economics or VWL. We learned a lot about the PESTLE or SWOT / TOWS analysis, for example, Porter’s 5 Forces were also there. The best thing, however, was that we had to apply and present most of the theories in practical case studies in the 3 projects before the exam. This is how the otherwise so dryly explained theories came to grips for the first time. The final exam consisted of a competition analysis between China and Europe, in which you had to argue your result based on a method.
6.4.2 International Marketing
This subject became my favorite subject. The lecturer Mr. Lim divided this complex subject in such a way and explained it clearly using a huge number of practical examples that it was almost impossible to have comprehension problems. Here one learns, for example, how to market a hair shampoo for women in a Muslim country if no hair is allowed to be shown on the advertising posters or in the TV commercial for cultural reasons! As a preliminary work for the final exam, a company had to be selected that would like to expand into a new country. The so-called “host country” was then analyzed in a presentation and a term paper, and a suitable marketing mix was then developed and evaluated. In the exam it was checked whether the methods learned in the lecture can be applied in practice.
6.4.3 Cross Cultural Management
CCM is comparable to “Interculture Communication” at the H-BRS. Here you get to know many different factors that lead to cultural differences and how to analyze them using the Hofstede or Trompenaar dimensions. From CCM I had the expectation to discuss our different ways of thinking and behaving in interactive lectures and direct exchange with my international fellow students. Unfortunately, this subject had the weakest lecturer. She mainly read from the front of her Ipad and had a military and, for my Asian group members, scary way of asserting herself. Compared to her own defeat as a lecturer, her demands on student performance in presentation and housework were almost unattainable.
