Once again The Sheffield Business School played host to final year Dual Award finance, marketing and hospitality students from TAR UC in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The students came to Sheffield Hallam to experience different teaching, learning styles, culture and employability skills. This year we felt it was important to build on last year’s success by introducing an Employability Event based on a real life case study. This aimed to integrate the students and promote interaction in a similar way to how they would work in practice. The event provided an experiential learning experience to develop a range of professional and employability skills. As a form of problem-based and integrated learning, the students worked collaboratively in a multi-disciplinary team to develop innovative solutions to a simulated business problem. Here they applied theoretical knowledge into professional practice. The students applied their research skills to understand international markets in a cross-cultural context, and collaboratively integrated analytical and creative skills from the perspectives of finance, marketing and hospitality. The Employability Event was well received by the students, and as incremental to the standard teaching programme, enabled professional refection and personal development. It also demonstrated the student’s ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines.
The TEL team created a film which follows two students to show their experiences of the event. Waitrose sponsored the prize for the best group presentation on Day 1 and SBS the best overall group prize on Day 2. The two days consisted of conducting market research in the international market to develop a retail marketing strategy for Waitrose. Finally students set up an exhibition stand of their ideas to be presented to an international judging panel.
As the event was so successful it will be repeated and developed for the Summer School 2017.
Written by Michael Benson
Film created by Tamsin Carr
