ABUS 350: International Agricultural Business Practices

Course Description

The goals of this course are to expose students to the basic facts and some theories of international trade and to teach students the important practical concepts and tools for international trade business, including international negotiation and contract (the Contracts for the International Sale of Goods--CISG), the international trade terms (INCOTERM 2010), international transportation and shipping document (Bill of Lading), international payment (Bill of Exchange), and the letter of credit (L/C) and the Uniformed Customs Practice (UCP600), as well as the operational procedure of agricultural international trade.

This is an elective course in the agribusiness major.

Course prerequisites: ABUS 101 or ECON 103.

Course Modality

This class is offered as an in-person class. All class materials, including PPTs, Readings, Homework Assignments, Quizzes, and Tests, will be posted in Canvas. Some short videos are also available in Canvas.

Course Design

The course content is organized across 9 topics/chapters:

Chapter 01: Introduction and Outlook of International Trade

Chapter 02: Basic Trade Theories

Chapter 03: Introduction of International Trade Business (ITB)

Chapter 04: International Sales of Goods—Big Picture

Chapter 05: INCOTERMS 2010

Chapter 06: Convention on International Sale of Goods (CISG)

Chapter 07: Main Clauses in Sales Contract

Chapter 08: International Transport and Bill of Lading

Chapter 09: Payment and L/C

Student Engagement

Discussion: There are a few topics, especially at the beginning of the semester, students will need to discuss during the class time, like Advantages of Trade, international trade is good or bad to a country’s economy, etc.

Trade simulation project: is a group project and requires students’ participation in discussion boards.

Assessment of Student Learning

Course Learning Objective and Learning Outcomes

Specific learning objectives include:

(1) to help students understand the difference between domestic trade and international trade and the challenges of doing international business;

(2) to familiarize students with some commonly used policy tools in international trade;

(3) to introduce business procedures used in agricultural international trade;

(4) to help students understand the United Nation convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), the trade terms (INCOTERMS2010) , the Letter of Credit (L/C), the Bill of Lading (B/L), and the Uniformed Customs Practice 600 (UCP600);

(5) to simulate the sale of a California-grown commodity from the farm gate to the export market outlet.

There are 500 total points possible. Students are graded on:

Attendance (30 points, 6%) ,

Homework (100 points, 20%),

Quizzes (90 points, 18%),

Project (80 points, 16%),

Midterm exam (80 points, 16%), and

Final exam (120 points, 24%).

Technology, Tools & UDL

Discussion: I plan to include and use discussion function to facilitate communication about the group project.

I tried to use Group functions from Canvas for project, but not very successful. Need more training about how to use group in Canvas to enhance students’ involvement.

The course offer the following opportunities to students:

Provide office hours in both in-person and zoom meeting;

Provide all PPTs to students;

Students can use readings and videos to improving their understanding.

ZERO COST MATERIALS

This course:

Does not require any textbooks

Provides all PPTs to students

Provides readings to students

Offers a "zero cost" design

Elements of Experiential Learning & Connections to the Profession

To help students gain hands-on experience to conduct international business trade, this course includes an experiential learning project. The class adopts a main California crop, organic rice, as our traded commodity to simulate our international trade transaction of a U.S. exporter selling organic rice to a Chinese importer. Thus, this group project is titled “Exporting California Organic Rice to China.” Before running this international trade simulation, detailed student instructions were carefully designed.

Students were divided into four groups:

Group 1: U.S. Rice Exporter

Group 2: Exporter’s Bank, Shipping Company, and Other Service Agencies

Group 3: Chinese Rice Importer

Group 4: Importer’s Bank

The Trade Simulation Project is to help students understand the meanings and the applications of the practical tools in international trade business. All students are divided into four different groups representing importer, exporter, import service group and export service group. Then each group will get pre-designed information package containing some public information and group specific information.

The simulation will simulate the whole trade process from negotiation to the collection of payment.

The newly redesigned project increased:

Student engagement
Experiential learning experience
Fair evaluation by both instructor and student project coordinator from both group and individual basis
Comprehensive application of all concepts and tools learned in lectures.

TRAINING IN COURSE DESIGN

The UDL FLC training provideD a friendly, inclusive, and versatile learning environment for all participants, demonstrating by actions about what they teach us. Lectures, demonstrations, discussions, guest speakers, and one on one sessions helped me greatly to understand more about the UDL concept and how to apply it in teaching. This training also helped me to revise my syllabus, some of my homework assignments, especially, significantly improved a group project for my class. In addition, from this training, I also learned more about the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), which will potentially enhance my ABUS350 (International Agricultural Business Practices) class significantly if I join this program and I do plan to learn more about it and be part of the program.

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