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Supporting Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs Today

Peter Godwin

University of Bedfordshire

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Peter GodwinUniversity of Bedfordshire

Supporting Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs Today

The challenge of today A new curriculum in the Business School The first year of its delivery in the Pods How Information Literacy fits in Project support for Business students Lessons and Conclusions

What they need to become

Collaborators Synthesizers Adaptors

Yolanda by Micheo flickr

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“One university has placed employability and the realities of the world of work at the heart of their business studies course for undergraduates.”

Higher Education at Work : High Skills: High Value. 2008.

(Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills)

Our challenge

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakebouma/109039319/

The content has left the container Electronic books Institutional repositories Google Decline of scholarly

monographs Open access journals

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All the literacies

Media literacy

IT literacy Information literacy Language literacy Visual literacy

E literacy Information fluency I-skills Information skills

What is Information Literacy?

“Information literacy is the adoption of appropriate information behaviour to identify through whatever channel or medium, information well fitted to information needs, leading to wise and ethical use of information in society.”

(Sheila Webber and Bill Johnston)

SCONUL Seven Pillars framework

SCONUL 7 Pillars

Recognising need for information Distinguishing sources and access Constructing search strategies Locating and accessing Comparing & evaluating Organising, applying and communicating Synthesising and adding new knowledge

The MEGO effect!

“Most instructors have stood in front of a class only to wonder if their only purpose on that day was to serve as a sedative for the majority of the class.”

Payne, et al (2006)

My eyes glaze over

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We should seek to change their habits and help to improve the quality of their questions

“It’s about student learning, stupid!”

Active Auditory

Constructivist Collaborative Kinesthetic

Visual

Contextual

Conversational Reflective

Opening the Pods, 18 Feb 2008

“The skills and talents that students are developing here using the business pods

will be highly sought-after by prospective employers."

Bill Rammell

Enter!

Our Pods

The Pods at UB Business School, Luton.

Project Hall Staff Room

IT area

Relaxation lounge

Brainstorm room

Boardroom

How it works Learning is meant to be as much like work as possible

• Students are “employed” by real businesses

• The podders are their “boss”

• At work everything matters: everything is directly or indirectly assessed

• About 180 students into cohorts of ≤ 50 students, divided into working groups of 5 students with two staff

Two sessions of three hours per week in the Pods,and two one-hour lectures

Workshops to support numeracy, Excel, Powerpoint etc

Curriculum delivery in the Pods

Student learning is structured around substantial projects

These aim to achieve learning outcomes within a “real-life” context and with involvement of external organisations.

Other inputs include occasional lectures and workshops which are aligned with the tasks.

Underpinned by customised textbook Replaces previous skills unit.

First Year Business Students in the Pods

Five cohorts in 3 hour sessions

We participate for about an hour with each cohort at relevant times in the project-driven curriculum

1. Vauxhall Recreation Club

First piece of work was a collaborative venture with Vauxhall Recreation Club

Students were given the task of attracting more members

The club is a partner of the University and provides sports facilities for University students

What we did … Short presentation in Project Hall and working with

groups Add context to the assignment, by looking at the

broader picture Recommend students to use electronic Key Note

Reports about Leisure and Recreation Centres Talk them through a SWOT of the market and

encourage them to relate it to the specifics of Vauxhall

Recommend relevant government statistics ( local area health stats )

2. Explore Adventure Holidays

• Students tasked with finding a market for an adventure holiday

• Understand Explore’s position in the industry and market

• Analyse the Explore data

• Identify an unserved segment, a gap in the market, a new holiday

• Develop, plan, price and cost a holiday

• Recruit a tour leader

• Propose the idea in a presentation and report

What we did…

Short presentation in Project Hall and working with the groups

Advised on sources giving broader picture for Adventure holiday market

Use of full-text databases (e.g. Business Source Premier)

3. Music Industry

“Are writers, musicians and other creative artists worth their pay?”

3000 word essay

What we did…

50 minute lecture to over 200 students about scoping the topic

Worked with groups in the Project Hall : Formulating 5 sub-topics related to the

question Keyword selection, and finding

information Importance of different sources

PLAN

RECORD

REFLECT

ACT

The research process

Future developments in the Pods

More use of the separate rooms to work with individual groups

Web access in the Brainstorm Room Work with academics to reflect on what worked

and how to improve the student experience Pod active learning is spreading to other years

as the whole curriculum is re-shaped into longer, larger units and terms.

I’ve really enjoyed the pods. They’re much better than other modules.

HRM Student

This is what I’ve always wanted to do.

Peter Godwin

LRC Podder

The pods have restored my enthusiasm for teaching. I was bored doing the same thing

over and over again. This is completely different – and I know the students!

David Wright

Academic Podder

[In my focus group] I couldn’t get the students to say anything negative!

Derek Barnsley

Academic Podder

Challenges Successes

Group work We really know the

students! Passing all the

assessments IT Details

• Assessments

• Things we forgot or got wrong

Happy staff Happy students Higher pass rate

(86% over the year) Featured in a

government green paper

Other uses of the Pods: Management projects

Final year dissertations have been replaced by a 5,000 word project

Students are assigned a question and one journal article to get them started

They work in small groups ( about 6/8 students initially ) for 3 weeks and after 12 weeks submit a final individual piece of work

Example Question…

“ You can’t learn to be Alan Sugar at business school. You are either an entrepreneur or you’re not. Discuss”

The Pods at UB

Project Hall Staff Room

IT area

Relaxation lounge

Brainstorm room

Boardroom

What we did

Discuss and select

keywordsAdvise on type of

information found

Demonstrate databases

Search tips

Lessons from our experiences

Forced us to review our purchasing priorities, as learners require access to journal articles and data rather than books

Led to new database purchases Blurred boundaries between academics and

LRC staff Moving from formal teaching toward

facilitating student learning, using more ‘improvised’ techniques

Conclusions Enables us to work with Business students in a

project based curriculum Advantages of small group contact in a flexible

environment Building block approach to skill development ( e.g.

getting used to accessing databases through the library catalogue )

Use of databases in one project may encourage use in others

We’re moving toward changing habits, creating a way of thinking, rather than imparting a set of skills

Mobiles –the ultimate portable computer