Learning & Teaching

Title of case study	Experiential Learning – Students Mentored by Consultants
School/Subject:	CoSS/ASBS/Business and Management
Lecturer(s):	Nick Quinn & Jillian Gordon
Course:	Entrepreneurial Ventures Management & Growth (MGT4019)
Student Level:	3rd/4th year UG
Class size:	50
Location:	Online / distance (during the pandemic, the course was run online) & on campus/in person

 

Brief summary

Nick and Jillian’s course transformed theoretical knowledge into practical experience by having business students develop consulting solutions for real organisations. Mentored by practicing consultants, both independent and from firms like Deloitte, students gained essential professional skills and real-world insights, bridging academia and industry while enhancing teamwork, problem-solving, and client interaction abilities.

 

Objectives

Coming from industrial backgrounds, we noticed how recent graduates possess vast theoretical knowledge but often struggle to apply it effectively in their jobs. While theory is crucial, its practical application is of vital importance, leading us to structure the course assessment around a practical challenge with real clients and mentors. 

Supporting this initial goal was the other aim of developing students’ essential professional skills, such as communication, time management, decision-making, leadership, and teamwork, which are in line with the university’s graduate attributes and are all crucial in their future workplace. The course also provided valuable work experience that can be used to provide worked examples for competency-based interviews with potential employers.

Finally, the course aimed to maximise the positive student experience while generating impact by engaging with the business community. It was important to us that students learn that making mistakes is part of the learning process and that they learn from them.

 

What is done?

The experiential learning method is designed as a summative assessment where students are placed in randomised groups of 4-5, with each group assigned to solve a real consultancy issue for a single client organisation, including charities or social enterprise. The groups meet with their clients in week four, asking clarifying questions to understand the problem fully. Each team also has a mentor—professional consultants from companies like Deloitte—who meet with them online in week five to provide expert guidance.

After meeting with their mentors, groups have four weeks to complete a presentation, a written report, and an individual reflective piece, which collectively make up their entire grade. Communication outside class is facilitated via dedicated MS Teams channels, where groups can reach out to mentors and lecturers for support. In week eight, groups present their findings to the teaching team for preliminary feedback before presenting to their clients in week nine or ten. These final presentations, attended by clients and lecturers, serve as the primary assessment for the course.

Logistically, the course requires minimal in-person resources; only the lecturers lead the sessions, and flat rooms are booked to foster a conducive atmosphere for interactive assessments. Clients and mentors, matched through the ASBS Business Development team, are carefully selected to align with course objectives.

Before week four, students attend flipped-classroom workshops, where they engage in pre-assigned readings and discussions, preparing them for client interactions and enhancing their comprehension of the material.

 

What works well?

The teams are randomly created so that students often have to work with people they do not already know and to provide an opportunity of bringing together students from different backgrounds and programmes.

The interactivity of the workshops and the assessment is a great example of seeing an active learning method in an authentic environment, which provides a good understanding of the differences between it and the traditional methods.

The students themselves testify to enjoying themselves more, as they can freely discuss and analyse their topics without feeling time pressured and with no knowledge overload.

The last great thing is the networking opportunities allowed for by the presence of the clients and the mentors, with students adding both on their LinkedIn profiles.

 

Benefits

Students

Staff

The assessment offers a practical application of theory on real world challenges. The singular unique benefit is the presence of professionals from renowned companies representing the clients and the mentors with whom students also have the chance to network. Alongside retaining their knowledge, students enhance existing and develop new professional skills such as teamworking, communication, decision making and time management. Finishing the project, students become more autonomous and confident in their knowledge, skills and practical application of both. Diverse teams are present as students come from different business degrees. Randomised teams allow for equal distribution of knowledge and prove an interesting challenge to overcome. There is enormous positive feedback from the students regarding the course and the assessment. Students are motivated throughout the entire assessment because there is the possibility of creating strong networking contacts with their assigned clients and mentors. The entire course is structured in a way where students retain agency over their learning with the lecturer only guiding them.

Having a professional background in the field, the course is in is extremely beneficial because of the knowledge, the resources and the contacts available. The course is tweaked every year, which not only improves the students’ learning experience, but also the lecturers’ teaching approaches and methods are also continuously improved. The lecturers also enjoy this teaching method a lot more than the traditional lecturing because of its interactivity. The flexibility and minimal topic constraints allow for deeper and better discussions in the workshops. Staff can engage with students more effectively in the workshops to discuss challenging topics. This is better because we can explore topics in the context of practice rather than just knowledge from a book or article. This in turn allows the lecturer to have a better understanding of the students’ knowledge and reasoning.  The lecturers get to know their students a lot better through the workshop discussions and the presentations. Some students remain in touch with the lecturers, maintaining that strong influence the course had on them. Enhanced understanding of the differences and benefits between student centered learning and traditional methods.

 

Challenges            

Students

Staff

The big challenge for students is to learn time management skills. As the group work takes place outside the classroom, students must efficiently work in their groups and utilise their professional skills to successfully pitch to their client. All this is done on their own. Consequently, this teamwork lets them hold each other accountable for the work they do. They are actively encouraged to solve their issues on their own instead of going to the lecturers, to further develop their conflict resolution skills which some might find challenging. If a student doesn’t engage with the pre-workshop materials, they might find it difficult to take part in the discussions during the workshop. Students must stay engaged during the whole course, as they cannot skip one, several or all workshops and still score high in their grades. Some students can then drop the course because it is not as easy as they might have expected. Individual team members must make decisions within their groups in order to motivate others. Some people strongly dislike groupwork, and their team members might not want to engage in this aspect to motivate them either.

Initially, it is very time-consuming to create and implement the intended method in the course. Especially during the first two years of running the course, doing everything yourself is very demanding and can even discourage some from continuing with the method. This is why collaborating with colleagues and utilising the available resources is key. Still, even if the resources are utilised, the method in the class requires some additional hours to be run efficiently. More organisational planning is needed for the course to be successful and for the ILOs to be truly achieved. Be prepared to be more adaptable to some sudden changes in arrangements as a natural aspect of working with clients and mentors. Delivering the course online is possible and even done but the quality and effects are not as great. In-person delivery with experiential learning is preferred to achieve the best results.

 

What did you learn?

The most important thing is to remember to remain flexible to continuous improvements. While the core factors remain, every year we sit down and reflect on what could be improved in the course. For example, this year we arranged for the clients to meet their assigned groups in person, as live communication proved more beneficial.

Another core aspect we learned is that the final presentations differ drastically online and in person. The latter is the better option, because the teams can see the body language and reactions of their clients and can better understand the success of their pitch.  

Remembering that the best student experience is what we want to achieve also allows us to shape our traditional way of thinking that students cannot come up with alternative and still good approaches to issues. Thanks to the workshop discussions and the open approach, we have learned a lot about our teaching methods.

Lastly, one of the biggest takeaways in terms of the whole delivery of the course is that online delivery in this environment is challenging. During the lockdown period where face to face was not allowed or was minimised, we found we had to deliver all elements of the course online. This was effective but we felt there was a lower engagement through the cohort when using only online methods. We reverted to face-to-face for the teaching and the initial client/mentor meetings, retaining the online for subsequent meetings. We also ask for the clients to attend a face-to-face final presentation. During the non-teaching time, we also meet with teams online to check in on their progress.

 

What advice would you give to others?

Don’t be hard on yourself! It is difficult to implement and run such a course for the first time, but it gets better with time. It is also quite a change to more traditional methods of teaching. There is a lot of support and lots of colleagues who are happy to help you and share their experience!

Also, recognise that this is about the students, and improving their learning experience. Students must be the ones leading the sessions and the lecturers should just facilitate the discussion and guidance. This definitely requires a change in the mindset from the traditional ‘sage on the stage’ to ‘guide on the side’ which can be a bit scary, but the outcomes for both sides are worth it.

We would recommend engaging in the supporting networks the university offers. Chat with fellow colleagues from your and other schools/colleges too, to discover their approaches and valuable insights. Just remember that there is no uniform approach to implementing active learning methods, meaning that there is always room for constantly improving your chosen method.

 

References

Quinn, N.  and Gibb, A.  (2023) The power of ‘active feedback’ to prepare students for professional experience. Times Higher Education, 2023, 9 May.  (2023, May 9). The power of ‘active feedback’ to prepare students for professional experience. Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/power-active-feedback-prepare-students-professional-experience

Gibb, A.  and Quinn, N.  (2023, May 22-23) Establishing Professional Practice: Developing Graduate Attributes Through Active Feedback in Experiential Settings. The Chartered ABS's Annual LTSE Conference (LTSE 2023), Newport, UK.