Students on the Intro to Business cohort were involved in a Core Skills project throughout semester one. The project involved work taught and assessed in Business, Marketing, Communication, Numeracy and IT.
As per a previous blog post (
http://candeatsce.blogspot.com/2011/10/too-many-cooks-can-improve-recipe-to.html) the final part of the project jigsaw culminated in the students delivering a presentation on their business plan to a cross section of lecturing staff. The Communication lecturer was assessesing the talks using a checklist in line with SQA guidelines joined by four members of staff to authenticate the process.
The students were asked to pitch for investment from the lecturing 'dragons' with prizes going to the best four presentations. In all, 19 presentations took place and there were four winners.
The winning pitches for the 2011 academic session were: a cafe serving homemade Polish delicacies (which were distributed to the judges and attendees), a computer repair business, a versatile graphics company and a dedicated server hosting business.
It is true to say that the three dragons awarding the prizes had a VERY difficult task in choosing the winners.
It was interesting to note that the winners each decided to give a short acceptance speech at the end and the themes coming out from this were thanking all the lecturers and tutor for their patience and guidance, the opportunities given to them at the initial interview, the cohesive nature of the group, the entrepreneurial skills learned and the many skills that they had developed throughout the semester such as budgeting, speaking, writing and listening.
In the evening many of the students came for a meal with Carole and Mark and it was a thoroughly engaging end to a successful project. Some photos from the presentation session and an example of one of the winning pitches can be seen below.
