Audencia Nantes ONLINE Summer School Exchange Report 2021 / Cong Tu Pham

Audencia Business School

For me, the most important factor in being a global leader is understanding different cultures. Not only understanding the Eastern culture where I live and study but also need to understand more Western culture. That's what prompted me to look for an exchange program at a particular Western-style school, Audencia, located in the beautiful city of Nantes in France. As I know many students at two schools giving good feedback for the quality of studying at Audencia. That’s why the reason I chose Audencia as my next destination.

Educational experience: Not only the reason for the environment with Western culture but also the quality of economic education at Audencia are the two most impressive things after I studied for an exchange period at the school. Over 80% of the students in my classes are from Europe (Germany; France; USA; UK) and the remaining 20% are from Asia and Africa. The special thing is that only I am from Vietnam so it was an opportunity for me to promote the culture of my country to the students in the class. Specifically, with the subject " Managing Diversity in Organizations " there is a module that discusses cultural diversity in organizations. We had an in-depth discussion of the differences between the two cultures with examples from the real experiences of our classmates. Since then I have learned a lot from them. Before I think the Western culture in the work opposite entirely with Eastern culture but after this course, I realized the difference between the two cultures has been shrinking and has many similar points that I have discovered. From there, Bringing useful knowledge to become a global leader in the future. Besides, I also attended some other classes such as Finance; Marketing; Digital transformation; Psychology of money, and consumer behavior. What I am most impressed with is that every lecture by the Professor is not only very well-prepared and careful, but the school also facilitates the recording of the class for each lesson so that each student can review the lesson after the class done. I still remember the subject " Measuring marketing effectiveness" the Professor taught in a new way for us to study and discuss completely on an online platform called "Miro". I really love that platform it seems like all his lectures are summed up in only one page where you are free to design what you like and work creatively in groups work based on some of the templates.

The third subject I want to mention here is "Psychology of money and consumer behavior" which really helped me gain insight into the meaning behind consumer behavior. I can apply those for marketing methods or setting prices that are suitable for the psychology and behavior of each different customers. Finally, it is impressive for the technology application of Audencia school. They have a platform learning designed and operated by themselves so they do not use the software of the partners such as "google classroom" or "zoom" platform to study as the NUCB. Besides good things, I could not avoid difficult things is to different time zones learning, there are lessons I have learned from 9 p.m until 2 a.m in Vietnam. Now I understand the feeling of my friends studying from France or Europe when they study at NUCB. In conclusion, not only did I experience the knowledge, technology, and culture during a summer program at Audencia furthermore importantly, I had so many a good friend in Audencia to expand my networking global.

Although all of my experience and knowledge are very useful and good, there are still some things I am not really satisfied with about the program. For example, in the subject "International corporate finance" about the distribution of grades in class, students taking the class accounted for 0% for participation and 100% for the final exam with 30 online multiple-choice questions. As I mentioned earlier, each class has been recorded so the student may not need to be in class to learn and just do the final exam is likely to surpass that subject even with high scores. Leads to each class, the percentage of students participating in the class is less than 60% and there is no motivation for students to participate in the class. I think, they should be a distribution to be equally between class participation and final exam grades to increase interaction with teachers and students, which in turn leads to more effective learning in the subject. Finally, I do not forget to say Thank you so much for Aimee. She has supported me very thoughtful and conscientious. Since then, I have had the best conditions to study and participate in a quality exchange program at Audencia. This was a valuable and rewarding experience during my 2 years of MBA.