Collaborative learning: Businesses and HE co-create

This novel research pivoted around a collaborative cyclical learning experience between businesses in a City Centre scape and a local Higher Education Institution. This concept provided for a dual aspect to learning; third level MBA students in parallel with business operatives in a City. The students were tasked with addressing a business problem in cooperation with City Hall and to write a ‘service charter for this city’, while being assessed for progression for their MBA. This Collaborative experiential learning (Kolb, & Kolb, 2017) centred on a group of 22 MBA students while they interacted with 20 businesses in a European City to research, develop and write a service charter. Details of the development of the charter per se are not dealt with in this paper, just the experience of its development by the students and business alike. Finding novel ways to assess third level students is always a challenge for Higher Education Institutions. Imagine the opportunity of being placed at the fulcrum of learning and business development through a dual aspect collaborative learning challenge and experiential learning. An experimental approach was afforded to MBA level 9 students when they were tasked with writing a ‘Service Charter ‘for their City – while in parallel, being assessed through ‘problem solving’ for 5 ECTS credits with the third level partner. The dual aspect of learning and co-creation between businesses and college began when the students sought to solve a problem for City businesses and find a solution to their problem and reflect on it, and the second, when a recommendation came from the research that the businesses needed to undertake further training in order to implement the plan of the final City Service Charter.