Business 202 course wins Bronze Award at QS Reimagine Education Awards
26 January 2023
The innovative new Business School course has received global acclaim at a recent awards ceremony.
The Business School’s new Business 202: Business Consulting course has been recognised as one of the best in Oceania, receiving a prestigious Bronze Award for the region at the 2022 QS-Wharton Reimagine Education Awards.
The awards were announced at a hybrid conference that took place simultaneously in Philadelphia, Cairo and online. Course Director Andrew Patterson and Course Coordinator Dr Nina Brosius were on hand at the University of Pennsylvania to attend the conference.
“It was a huge surprise and honour for us to find out that we won,” Nina says.
For us, this win certainly validates that we are on the right track with this innovative undergraduate course. The award also recognises the immense effort of the entire teaching team and every other stakeholder who has been part of this journey.
The Reimagine Education Awards – described as the ‘Oscars’ of education – celebrate the best in education around the world. Over 1,000 applications were received for the 2022 awards, which were judged by an expert group of 500 education experts hailing from 77 countries and territories. With only the top 18% of submissions making the shortlist, even making it to that round felt like an achievement, says Andrew.
“We certainly had no expectations of winning one of the awards! Having travelled some distance for the awards and conference, it was a good feeling to know that we were to return home with something tangible on behalf of the team.”
Business 202 launched just last year as a compulsory course for second-year Bachelor of Commerce students. Instead of traditional assessments such as essays or exams, students get hands-on by engaging in tasks such as a climate change negotiation, building a LinkedIn profile, presenting in Spatial.io (a collaborative VR platform) and crafting an infographic.
That same innovative and forward-thinking learning that underpins the course was also a major theme throughout the conference, says Andrew.
The conference helped reinforce the importance of designing and delivering skills-based, multidisciplinary courses and collaborating to produce creative, innovative solutions to the challenges faced by the world and reflected in tertiary education.
With that in mind, the teaching team are looking ahead to exciting horizons for Business 202, with plans to integrate additional technology and tools such as AI into the course content going forward.
“We have a great team and we’re excited by the work that is going into incorporating lessons and content on and with AI in the Future of Work module,” says Andrew.
“We’re exploring other creative ways for students to present their research, analyses, and findings in the Competing Globally module, and seeking to meaningfully integrate indigenous knowledge and perspectives into the Climate Change module.”
For Nina, attending the conference was an “inspiring and invigorating” experience that reinforced some core beliefs about the importance of education.
“One speaker shared a powerful statement which was ‘As educators, we transform our students, and through them we transform the world for the better. For me personally, this hit the nail on the head: Playing a part in shaping students’ futures is why I do what I do!”