UCLAN and Shanghai's winning partnership
This is designed to help interaction between Chinese and British students, to enhance British students' international experience and employability and entrepreneurship competence. It is a joint programme between UCLan Business School, Futures (UCLan's Careers and Employability Service) and Shanghai International Foreign Trade (SIFT), comprising:
• Interactive learning and self-exploration - Doing Business in China: Interactive workshops to teach business knowledge and personal and enterprise skills.
• Self-learning and networking: Students joined UCLan's network of entrepreneurs and the National Centre for Entrepreneurship in Education (NCEE) student network enabling them to learn from the experience of others.
• UK-China Business Idea Competition: A business pitch competition with opportunities to learn about running a real business in China. Students with the best concepts pitched their ideas to a panel of judges, and five students were rewarded with a ten-day learning and business trip to Shanghai.
• China Experience: The successful students, working with local students, lecturers and business owners, learnt about Chinese culture and business custom. They visited different types of enterprise and made useful personal and business contacts. They then presented their business ideas and their reflective learning progress to an international conference on employability and entrepreneurship education attended by over 70 academics from seven countries.
• Reflective Learning: Students submitted their diaries to produce a reflective learning log and a full business plan.
Evidence of effectiveness and success
The programme helped students to develop their self-efficacy as well as enhancing their employability and entrepreneurship competence in a global context. It also helped to promote British entrepreneurship education in China as well as encourage Chinese students to integrate into British society through learning and participating in a range of UK-China business activities, both in the UK and China.
"This is a life-time experience that I will never forget."
"I am inspired to succeed in business."
"It has helped me to refine my UK-China business idea and I hope to come back to Shanghai soon."
Additionally, an elective module, UK-China Business Creation, was developed, which is now available to all UCLan students.
• Winner - AGCAS 2011 Award for Excellence: International
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Tags: University internationalisation china UCLan employability entrepreneurship case studies
Created on: 17 November 2011
Last updated: 06 January 2012