SASS Entrepreneur Challenge 2015
Our objective was for Y10 Entrepreneurial Economics students to acquire important skills and key knowledge regarding entrepreneurship and Business Studies. We aimed to enable students to explore, and inspire them, in the use of their own entrepreneurial skills, and to foster team work and learning from each other.
The challenge was to come up with a product or service that could satisfy an unmet need or want of the St. Andrew`s community. It was presented as a problem to solve and students collaboratively had to present a project that could both be relevant for the community and successful in terms of entrepreneurship. Applying principles of PBL and the use of a blog we defined the following methodology:
- Organization: Students got together in groups of 5. The whole of Y10 participated in this project.
- Brainstorming: The first step was to come up with a good or a service that could cover an unsatisfied need or want of St. Andrew`s community. Through a brainstorming session, students pictured and designed either a completely new product, a product that exists but not at SASS, an improvement of an existing product or a new service, such as an app.
- Market Research: Students then carried out a market research. Through the elaboration of questionnaires which allowed them to survey the target population. With this information students adjusted their product or service proposal accordingly.
- Peer Review: Subsequently, they uploaded their ideas to a specially designed blog where they presented their ideas and subject them to a peer review allowing a very useful cross feeding of ideas.
- Mentoring: Teachers, then, acted as mentors and contributed to their projects with their professional view.
- Final Presentations: Using all the feedback available, students elaborated a final revised version of their products (including concepts as Marketing Mix and Financial Accounts) and presented them in a contest in each class. Some groups were even able to develop a preliminary prototype/demo that was used during their presentation.
- Grand Final: Through student vote, a winner per class was elected, which then participated in the grand final where invited judges decided on the winner of the SASS Entrepreneur challenge 2015.
- Contribution: Furthermore, the challenge continues as the winner project will be funded by SASS to carry out their idea next year and make a concrete and realistic contribution to our community.
Our objectives were met. Students, through the solving of a real problem, accepted the challenge and experienced a learning process were central concepts of Business Studies had to be applied and skills were developed. The project involved plenty of student participation, transcended the classroom and incorporated interactions and feedback from both peers and teachers.
Please visit our blog where you can find all the amazing and creative projects of our students:
By: Cristina Goutmann, Martìn Cassels, Simon Chater and Francisco Lutteral – Y10 Entrepreneurial Economic teachers.