BGU Business Students Embrace Learning on a Global Scale
BGU students are being given the opportunity to engage in a live international business project that will allow them to gain direct hands-on experience in working with students from around the globe.
Coordinated by Chris Jackson, BGU’s Programme Lead for Team Entrepreneurship, the project will engage up to 100 students from universities in the UK, USA, Finland, Ecuador, China and Nigeria. Participants will be split into groups of ten and then issued with a business challenge by a company with a global presence. Says Chris:
“This is a great opportunity for any young person to develop and test the skills and attributes they will need as they move forward into the world of work. The project will need them to come together as a team, decide for themselves how they want to address the task, establish objectives and delight the client. It’s about as real as it gets.”
“Lockdown restrictions have seen us all have to adapt to new ways of working that can present challenges that haven’t been experienced before. While some people wait for a new ‘normal’ to return, the wheels of enterprise have to keep turning. We have a responsibility to make sure our learners don’t get left behind or miss out on any opportunity to explore new ways of working”.
Participating students will experience many challenges, including language and cultural differences, coping with time zone disparities and having to find effective ways of communicating, not to mention any basic issues such as shyness.
Each team will have access to an experienced international Team Coach. “The role of the Team Coach is neither to lead or instruct”, explained Chris. “Our role is more as a ‘guide on the side’ than ‘sage on the stage’. When learners say, ‘we don’t know what to do’, then we might simply ask them what they might do and encourage them to find alternative solutions to the problem. Of course, they might not make the ‘right’ decision first time, but we want them to become curios about the world they live in and more so discover what is ‘right’ for them”.
The challenge begins in October and will run through to December, although interest is such that there are already plans to extend the initiative through 2021.
The initiative is open to any student who wants to learn about teamworking and active enterprise on a global scale.
For further information please contact Chris Jackson at chris.jackson@bishopg.ac.uk
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