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Clare Dowding

Page history last edited by sceptrept 15 years ago
CoLab – learning how organisations work through student-based enterprise
Clare Dowding and Norman Jackson, Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education (SCEPTrE), University of Surrey

 

Understanding how organizations work and what makes them not work so well is something that most professionals have to learn. Typically such understanding is gained through the experience of working in an organization on placement or through part-time employment at university. SCEPTrE’s CoLab project enables students to find out what growing an organization and making it work is all about.

 

The idea has progressively matured over three cycles of recruitment. Students apply to join CoLab through a letter of application in response to an email advert. They are interviewed and those accepted (15 in 2008-09) join one of two teams :   

1) Networking Team who conduct surveys of students’ views on various topics in the faculties, organise events that would be relevant to students and run a weekly GU2 Radio show.

2) Technology Team who organize Web 2.0 Discovery Workshops and have developed a work enterprise that is again focused on finding out what students think about a range of topics and providing a ‘Student Voice’ website for collecting, distilling and broadcasting students views.

 

The core enterprise underlying the work of both teams is what John Dewey called productive enquiry. Productive enquiry is a key agency that is relevant to any professional field it involves ‘finding out the things you need to find out in order to do the things you need to do’. Learning is supported through a reflective process embedded in Learning through Experience Certificate.

 

Students learn many things from the CoLab experience but one of the most important things is how an organization forms, develops and works. Whether by design or accident students learn that creating shared vision of an enterprise is very difficult, that negotiation of the work enterprise is a continuous and difficult process, that good communication is crucial to successful performance, that leadership and good management are essential for any successful enterprise.   They also learn that there is a lot more to reaching a successful outcome than having the initial idea and receiving an enthusiastic response from the team members.

 

The paper will examine what we have learnt about facilitating learning through a student-based enterprise - what students think they have learnt and what we think they have learnt and reflect on the potential contribution of student organizations like CoLab to the development of professional capability in a life-wide curriculum?

 

Presentation

 

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