Business students present Lincolnshire visitor economy project at QAA conference

BA (Hons) Team Entrepreneurship students Dan Spence and Sergiu Badea joined with students from University of Lincoln to deliver an online presentation at the annual QAA Quality Matters conference.

Quality Matters is Quality Assurance Agency’s annual student-focused conference and provides an introduction to student engagement in quality assurance and enhancement, preparing student representatives for the year ahead.

Bishop Grosseteste University third-year students Dan and Sergiu are currently working on a QAA-funded joint project that is carrying out research into the visitor economy in Lincolnshire, along with University of Lincoln Students Emilija Zavadzkyte and Iulia Poama-Covaki. Iulia is an undergraduate studying leisure and tourism and Emilija is a postgraduate studying digital marketing.

Bishop Grosseteste’s Senior Lecturer in Business and Enterprise Chris Jackson and University of Lincoln’s Assistant Professor Georgiana Els successfully submitted a joint bid to QAA earlier in the year.

Chris Jackson said: "The 'Team Academy" methodology used in the Team Entrepreneurship course at BGU has far more application that just learning about 'business'.

“Instead of simply directing the project, we are team coaching the students using a model and principals of self-determined dialogic learning. We're not telling or guiding; we're curating the process."

Professor Georgiana Els, said: "The thinking behind the project is twofold. Firstly, we do want to carry out research into our Visitor Economy and gather valuable data. However, we also wanted to think about how we could do this in a more meaningful way and instead of just involving or directing students in the project, we decided that we would recruit students to design and lead the project themselves.

“In this way they learn not only to collaborate, communicate and share their own developing knowledge, but they also work on a 'live' research project that will help them to develop personal attributes and academic skills."

The students delivered a 40-minute presentation to the QAA audience, explaining not only the project, but their personal learning journeys and experiences so far.

They also outlined how the project will progress and details of proposed workshops. The project will run until July 2022.

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