Tuesday November 9th 01/AC02 SCEPTrE Fellowship Seminar 12.30-13.45
Surrey Team Enterprise Project: ' Giving Birth' to a Team Academy'
Paul Tosey, Graham Robinson, Spinder Dhaliwal, Nigel Biggs and Cameron Wilson (student), University of Surrey
What could happen if you replaced classrooms with open plan offices; teachers with coaches; simulations with real businesses; and presentations with `birth-givings’?
An innovative and successful approach to entrepreneurial, knowledge-based business education, the Team Academy involves students in creating and running real businesses. Pioneered in Jyväskylä, Finland in 1993, the Academy is now a nationally accredited degree awarding institution within the Finnish Educational system; it claims that over 30% of the businesses generated by the 800+ students who have graduated from it over the past 16 years are still trading profitably and some 60% of its graduates have continued to be engaged in entrepreneurial, start up businesses. The Team Academy approach eschews a traditional, teacher-centred approach in favour of a learning partnership supported and facilitated by coaches, with an emphasis on action, experiential learning, and capability development.
Our SCEPTrE Fellowship `STEP1 (Surrey Team Enterprise Project) has explored the feasibility of introducing the Finnish `Team Academy’ model to the University of Surrey. In this session the STEP1 team give you a flavour of the Team Academy approach and report on their investigations.
