"What's the Best Deal?" competition - a CIE-SJI collaboration
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| Republic Polytechnic’s
Centre for Innovation & Enterprise
(CIE) undertook a seven week Problem-Based
Learning (PBL) enterprise program with
St Joseph's Institute on 6th February 2003.
This programme was designed to equip secondary
three students with the necessary business
skills to think up creative business ideas,
craft and articulate business plans in
presentations. At the same time, this presented
facilitators with the opportunity to get
thoroughly familiar with their problem-crafting
and facilitation skills. The lessons and
experiences gained by both SJI and The
Republic in the weekly interaction can
be said to be immeasurable. |
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118 Secondary Three
SJI students had the privilege of enjoying
six weekly sessions with the CIE facilitators
- each session lasting three hours. During
the first phase of four weeks, students
learnt the foundations of enterprise
skills using PBL pedagogy. In each of
the four sessions, students were not
taught by facilitators any enterprise
skills but were instead shown real world
problems for them to solve by themselves
in their own groups of four. New knowledge
was learned along the way as a result
when students attempted to solve these
problems & share their findings during
self-directed learning in their own groups
and in class presentations.
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The majority of the
students who voluntarily took part in
this program found this “student-centered” way
of learning a very enriching experience.
Their curiosity was engaged through the
problem-solving process and the consequential
retention of new knowledge was enhanced
as students could relate the process
of learning new knowledge to a purpose.
Without doubt, learning through this
way was very meaningful & enjoyable
for them. This student-centered way of
learning allowed the students to apply
the new knowledge gained in solving a
problem they could associate with. Many
students enjoyed each session and gained
the ability to reason and think via PBL
for everyday problems and situations.
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In the first four weeks,
the students from SJI learned about topics
such as:
- What makes a good
entrepreneur?
- Is an entrepreneur
is born or made?
- How to generate
good business ideas?
- How to determine
if a business concept is viable?
- What is SWOT & PEST
analysis?
- Positioning, market
segmentation and target markets
- What are financial
statements and how to draft them?
The following three
weeks saw the commencement of the “Best
Deal Competition” in which students
in their various groups competed with one
another on the strength of their business
ideas. The SJI students had to rely on
the learning skills they had picked up
from earlier sessions to think of a viable
business and to draft their marketing plans.
The best four groups were eventually selected
after two rounds of selection process which
involved class presentations and an elevator-test
in the lecture theatre. |
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The final day of the
competition arrived on 22nd March 2003
where Fong Yew Chan & Dr Terence
Chong, Directors of Schools of Engineering
and Applied Science respectively as well
as John Young, SIT academic program chair,
from Republic Polytechnic were invited
to form the panel of judges. SJI Principal
Mr Lui Seng Chong & Deputy Principal
Mrs Goh Poh Kenn were also invited to
be on the judges panel. A venture capitalist,
Mr. Jeffrey Khoo from 3Vsource1 also
volunteered his time to be one of the
judges.
CPG Consultants Pte
Ltd kindly sponsored $1000 worth of book
vouchers to the event as book prizes
to the best four teams who made it to
the finals. The winning team walked away
with the Teo Cheng Guan Trophy and $400
hundred dollars worth of book vouchers
from CPG and an additional $20 voucher
per person from SJI. The general consensus
amongst the SJI students is that they
had gained tremendously from this enterprise
program, in terms of enterprise knowledge
as well as in public speaking. To conclude,
to all intents and purposes, this outreach
program is declared a success and moving
forward, CIE will continue to pursue
opportunities to collaborate with other
secondary schools.
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Republic Polytechnic
wishes to thank all staff and students
at St Joseph's Institution for allowing
us to have the opportunity of working
with them for the seven weeks. We would
like to extend special thanks to Mr Lui
Seng Chong, Principal of SJI, Mrs Goh
Poh Kenn, Deputy Principal as well as
Mr Bernard Low, Project Coordinator and
Ms Patricia Ang, Public Affairs Manager
for their kind assistance and support.
© March 2003,
Republic Polytechnic.
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