Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of Study Abroad and Their Level of Achievement of Global Learning Outcomes

This study expanded on current research on study abroad and global learning, using the Global Perspective Inventory (GPI), and conducted at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, FL. The GPI assesses the holistic development of a global perspective in higher education within three domains and their respective FIU-determined equivalents: cognitive (global awareness), intrapersonal (global perspective), and interpersonal (global engagement). The main purpose of this study was to assess FIU’s undergraduate students’ perceptions of study abroad on their level of achievement of global awareness, global perspective, and global engagement. The secondary purpose was to determine how the students described their study abroad experience and achievement of global learning. The research design for this study consisted of parallel mixed methods. The quantitative component was an ex post facto with hypothesis design, using a pretest/posttest nonequivalent group methodology. FIU undergraduates (N=147) who studied abroad for one semester or more completed the GPI pre- and post-tests. Descriptive statistics and paired t-tests were conducted to compare the means. The interviews included 10 students, and were analyzed through Structural coding, Saldaña’s In Vivo coding, and Value coding. Quantitative analyses indicated positive changes in the students’ global awareness and global perspective. These analyses also showed that the FIU students achieved higher post-test means on all the domains of the GPI compared to other studies. Qualitative analyses showed that the students’ experiences incorporated all three global learning outcomes, most notably global awareness and perspective.

Labor turnover : its causes, consequences, and control strategy in five selected restaurants in the Miami area

The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the basic causes of food service employee turnover in five selected restaurants in the Miami area. The withdrawal behavior in this study is treated in terms of controllable turnover, for the purpose of management, learning more about what action to take to solve this problem which has eaten into the fabric of the hospitality industry. The aim is to find out from the food service employees and management view of work for the purpose of identifying the variables which cause an employee to voluntarily leave a job. The objective is therefore, to analyze and describe the problem of labor turnover in these selected restaurants. Such description must precede efforts to arrive at solutions to the problem if these efforts are ever to be more than haphazard and superficial. Sigmund Freud once stated: "The true beginning of scientific activity consists in describing phenomena and only then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them."1 The nature of the study is basically descriptive survey. Data is collected by the use of management questionnaire, food service employee questionnaire and finally employees job description index. The survey consisted of a series of well defined questions with open and closed endings dealing with employee with employee turnover. As Robert Ferber and P. J. Verdoom state in their book titled Research Method in Economics of Business: "Structured questionnaires, by supplying question formulations in very specific terms as well as the different possible answers are easier for the sample members to answer and also serve to reduce the danger of interviewer bias."2 The answers to the prepared questionnaire by sample members were then recorded. The results of the questionnaire responses were then compiled for presentation and analysis. 1 Julian Simon, Basic Research Methods in Social Science. Random House, New York, 1969, p.53. 2 Robert J. Ferber and P.J. Verdoon, Research Methods in Economics and Business, The McMillan Company, 1962, p. 20 9 .