The retail sector is India’s second largest employer and in the U.S., it is the largest private sector source of employment. These retail sectors face a growing shortage of employees with needed managerial skills in areas such as merchandising, purchasing, logistics, and marketing. A partnership among seven faculty members from Iowa State University (ISU), two from Oklahoma State University (OSU), one from the University of North Texas (UNT), and seven from India’s National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) addressed this issue by sharing and applying educational strategies and leading-edge industry knowledge to better prepare students and industry professionals to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing, global retail industry. The activities of this partnership were funded by the United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF).

 

The educational activities from the collaboration began with a developing a graduate student course, which included two-week international exchanges of U.S. and NIFT faculty members that entailed (a) exploring differences in teaching strategies/curricula, (b) finalizing educational modules and offering jointly-developed online graduate level courses for U.S. and Indian students, (c) undertaking service-learning activities with U.S. and Indian small businesses, and (d) presenting public lectures. Advisory boards, consisting of U.S. and Indian retail industry professionals, assessed and provided input to the modules. Following the international exchanges of collaborators, the open source educational materials of this website were developed to disseminate the learning modules to a broader audience, such as small retail business operators in both countries.

 

These grant activities are intended to broaden the cultural perspectives, retailing content knowledge, and/or knowledge of teaching strategies for the collaborators, those attending the graduate courses or public lectures, and those using these open source educational materials. This website is intended specifically for the dissemination of open source educational materials for use by small businesses in India and the United States.