Our Enterprise Challenge (with some exam skills for good measure!)

This week, Graham Prior (AKA ”Lord Sutch”) and I are putting the finishing touches to the Priestley College Business Challenge Event 2012. It is the fourth year we have been invited to Priestley College to deliver a fun but challenging event to their AS students, who have just sat their F291 unit exam.

The day combines a series of enterprise challenges, but with a twist! The exercises also have a real focus on the development of key examination skills and also recap key topic areas from their AS OCR Business course. Thanks to Julie McDonald, HOD of Business who has given us the heads up on topics they have covered – perfect info to build into our team challenges for the day.

Already, we have set teams off with their two pre-event challenges: creating a team and coming up with a brand identity. Some unique names have already been received. Will Team Cheese Toast or Team Let’s Get Down to Business have what it takes to meet the deadlines and succeed at the ultimate research challenge!? Which team will successfully research the answers to the challenge and start the event on Monday at the top of the Priestley leader board?

We kick off the day with our multi-choice game show quiz. Can teams maximise their score by correctly answering questions on the Business news and topics from their OCR F291 unit? Who will be nominated as their team Business Guru? This person will represent their team and take on individual spot challenges showing their business acumen.

Six challenges are given to the teams throughout the day. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Graham challenge students with “Smooth”.... an activity designed to develop student’s skills of data analysis and evaluation. Has this product got what it takes to compete effectively in the Smoothie Market? Only the best arguments and justifications will receive the top scores from our challenge judges.

So, we’re just about ready for a full day of activity with the 137 business students – we’re really looking forward to it!

We’ll keep Business Blog readers posted with the outcome and try to grab some photos of the day too.

If you think this kind of event might be of interest to your students, then please get in touch. There are lots of enterprise events out there, but our focus is on linking an enterprise experience with developing exam skills too. The Challenge day is also ideal for inducting students to Business courses or kick starting the study of new units. So get in touch with me!