The importance of experimental teaching in international trade practice course
International trade practice course has strong professionalism and practicality, requiring students to be familiar with the import and export process in foreign trade, various general knowledge of foreign trade and business skills of import and export transactions.
At the same time, the international trade practice course also has a strong comprehensive. It requires students to be familiar with the preliminary trade negotiations with foreign investors, the signing of contracts and performance links.
This requires students to be proficient in at least one foreign language, fluent in oral and written negotiations with foreign businessmen; understand the knowledge of international business law and a variety of international practices and rules related to international trade practice; master the knowledge of international marketing, effective market segmentation, target customer base; and understand and master the international freight and insurance, customs inspection practices and other aspects of comprehensive knowledge.
Therefore, international trade practice is a highly comprehensive professional course, relying only on classroom theory teaching, can not meet the requirements of the course. The effective implementation of experimental teaching plays a pivotal role in improving the students’ foreign trade business ability and practical skills.
Therefore, the experimental courses of international trade practice offered in colleges and universities should be given high attention, and the innovative exploration of experimental teaching mode can greatly stimulate students’ enthusiasm to participate in experiments and improve the experimental teaching effect.
Problems in the experimental teaching of international trade practice course
(a) The experimental project design is not too reasonable.
At present, many colleges and universities have opened experimental hours for international trade practice courses, but the design of experimental projects is more arbitrary, and the design of experimental projects of related professional courses is duplicated, and the connection is not reasonable.
For example, the experimental projects of international settlement, foreign trade order making and international trade practice courses for international economics and trade majors have a lot of crossover and repetition, without adjusting the experimental projects according to the focus of their respective courses and improving students’ practical hands-on ability in a targeted way.
At the same time, the design of many experimental projects is fragmented, limited to a single practical skills practice, the lack of a comprehensive process of practical training project design, easy to make students lack of grasp of the whole process of trade practice.
(B) the experimental software content update lags behind.
Today’s international economic situation is changing rapidly, the international market situation and exchange rates, import and export tax policies continue to change, and students in international trade practice laboratory class using the software content mostly lags behind, not keep up with the changes in the current international economic environment and adjust.
Experimental software content update lags behind, directly affecting the learning effect of the students to carry out experimental simulation, can not truly understand the reality of the international economic situation, can not be familiar with the current international trade practices, such as international settlement, international freight, customs clearance and other aspects of the latest practices and policies.
For example, the current Internet + background, the development of cross-border e-commerce is in full swing, but the actual experimental teaching of international trade practices rarely involves this part of the content, enough to show that the current teaching can not keep up with the development of international trade practices and changes.
(C) the lack of experimental teaching resources.
Although there are a variety of teaching materials on the market about international trade practice, but for the experimental project design of international trade practice teaching materials are not very common.
Most colleges and universities to teach international trade practice are relying on the experimental guide prepared by the experimental instructor, the content is less fragmented, not systematic and rich.
In addition, the construction of comprehensive training laboratories for experimental teaching of international trade practice has lagged behind, and many colleges and universities still take the traditional computer plus experimental software laboratory model, failing to build a professional laboratory that can adapt to the demand for comprehensive experiments of international trade practice full simulation simulation.
(D) the lack of experimental teaching faculty.
To carry out high-quality experimental teaching of international trade practice for the instructor’s requirements are quite high, not only to have a solid theoretical knowledge of practice, but also have a wealth of practical experience.
But at present, many teachers in colleges and universities mostly belong to the “school to school” process, the lack of practical experience, the implementation of experimental projects for students encountered in the process can not give good guidance.
Therefore, the experimental teaching faculty is relatively weak is also one of the reasons affecting the effective implementation of experimental teaching of international trade practice.
Suggestions for innovation of experimental teaching mode of international trade practice course
(a) the implementation of international trade practice experimental project-based teaching.
Project-based teaching means that by setting a complete project, in the process of following up the implementation of the project to achieve the improvement of students’ professional skills and practical skills. This new experimental teaching mode, breaking the traditional purely theoretical teaching “duck-fill indoctrination”, experimental objectives are clear, can greatly mobilize the enthusiasm and subjective initiative of students.
Students can digest and master the knowledge points of classroom theoretical teaching in the process of participating and carrying out project-based practical training, and further familiarize themselves with the operation process of international trade practice and the operation skills of each link in practice, and at the same time can exercise students’ emergency handling ability in the face of unexpected events.
In the process of experimental project-based teaching, the teacher is no longer the dominant knowledge impartor, but the observer and guide. The teacher needs to observe the students’ performance in the process of project implementation, give help and guidance when necessary, and organize students to conduct self-assessment and mutual evaluation of the project implementation effect.
At the same time in the design of international trade practice experiments project-based teaching content, as far as possible to simulate the reality of the international economic environment, including the current foreign trade policy, the world market situation, various tax levels and related international practices and rules, etc., to provide students with a realistic international trade transaction environment as far as possible, so that students have a sense of immersion.
(B) experimental teaching combined with professional skills competition.
Competition to promote learning. At present, the “POCIB National University Students’ Foreign Trade Competitiveness Competition” sponsored by the China International Trade Association and the National Vocational Education and Teaching Guidance Committee of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation has been recognized and praised by many universities.
On the POCIB platform, students can choose to set up companies in many countries around the world, such as the United States, Germany, Japan, China, etc., and find suitable trading partners by releasing product information on the platform, and then sign a contract through transaction negotiation, and the importers and exporters will perform different obligations according to the contracted settlement methods and trade terms. Eventually the system will evaluate the students based on their business ability, learning ability, profitability and other aspects in a comprehensive manner.
The experimental teaching of international trade practice can be carried out by the organic combination of experimental software such as Simtrade software and foreign trade practice ability competition.
To encourage students to actively participate in the opportunity, students are required to play the different roles of importer, exporter, bank in the place of import, bank in the place of export, customs inspector, etc. in the simulation training, and experience several actual businesses combined with different settlement methods (remittance, collection, letter of credit) and trade terms, so as to be familiar with the whole process of import and export business and kinds of business links, and require comprehensive international market development, This will promote students’ enthusiasm and interest in participation and create an atmosphere of healthy competition and teamwork among trade partners.
(3) Optimize the experimental teaching resources, and combine the on-campus and off-campus bases.
The ultimate purpose of experimental teaching of international trade practice is to improve the business ability of students and create qualified foreign trade talents. To improve the effect of experimental teaching of international trade practice, we should start with the idea of grasping both internal and external resources, on the one hand, we should increase the investment in hardware and software of the comprehensive simulation training base of international trade practice, update the experimental teaching software, improve the hardware conditions of the laboratory; on the other hand, we should promote the construction of the school-enterprise cooperation platform, to establish a platform for students to engage in foreign trade business practice, so that students have the opportunity to really go into the enterprise. Into society, to understand the real business environment and operating procedures of enterprises, to exercise the actual business ability of students.
(D) strengthen the experimental teaching faculty training, improve the business ability of teachers.
For carrying out the high requirements of experimental teaching of international trade practice, many teachers in colleges and universities lack practical experience, resulting in the process of teaching guidance is inevitably incompetent. Therefore, to strengthen the training of the experimental teaching faculty, encourage the experimental instructors to large foreign trade industry, the bank international settlement department for attachment, to understand the latest requirements of foreign trade practice, master the latest foreign trade practice skills, and accumulate more business experience in the field.
In this way, not only can we adjust the teaching objectives and teaching contents in a more targeted way, but also give more effective guidance to students in experimental teaching. At the same time, universities can introduce some industry elites with rich practical experience in foreign trade industry and familiar with first-line foreign trade policies as part-time tutors to teach students first-line business experience if conditions permit. Appropriate allocation of some “dual-teacher” teachers can also help improve the level of experimental teaching faculty.