The programme impacted numerous stakeholders-entrepreneurs, social enterprises and community groups but most significantly students learning and self-development:

Entrepreneurial journey/self-development: Students acquired core entrepreneurial competencies, enhanced their self-knowledge, developing an appreciation of entrepreneurs’ “natural” habitats. Learning was characterised by an intrinsic sense of joy/achievement, despite personal and professional challenges:

“…….. feel empowered to present to anyone withoutworries…means a lot to me and my future career”.
“learned to know when to lead and when to be lead”
“Personally…had to understand and tie together ……a lot of fluid concepts….though it wasn’t easy I was really proud of this…….felt I had really conquered something”

Bridging Theory and Practice: programme bridged the student journey from university to working life, balancing structure and flexibility in connecting “real world” authentic learning :

“loved learning by doing …..much more beneficial way of learning…….. hands-on approach teaches you skills for life without you even realising it”

“It brought us from the classroom to the “real-world” and prepared us for whats ahead”

“……….This is the closest we …..get to a real-life work scenario”

Building relationships/networks: Learning was co-produced through team and entrepreneur interactions, recognising the added-value of strong relationships with multiple actors as an integral part of the experience.

“formed a relationship with the client…….beneficial as will continue to work with them over the summer…… in developing…….. the company even further”

“Each team member had a different way of doing things…….we got along with each other……. and made it work”

Changing role of students and educators: It was extremely positive to see students adapt their learning styles when faced with “real-life” scenarios, with increased enthusiasm and engagement. Students moved from passive learning modes to taking ownership/responsibility for their learning journey, and that of team members demonstrating the importance of accountability beyond the classroom to entrepreneurs. The real-time self-directed learning highlighted both the benefits and complications of teamwork. Students embraced team diversity, pushing each other to higher standards, and realising that co-production of learning enhances team performance. Teamwork generated new learning – conflict management, managing expectations, realising individual varied views of work and quality, appreciating listening as a key skill, challenging poor performance and managing internal frustration. Students’ experience and negative learning episodes (decisions going wrong, or no right answer) were acknowledged, enabling and empowering them to deal with ambiguity- the reality of using entrepreneurial action as a catalyst for social and environmental impact.

In developing immersive learning, advice for educators is be prepared to move from traditional lecture-based teaching methods, to a transformative learning modes- acting as knowledge conveyors networkers, facilitators, coaches, mentors and challengers. This requires a supportive real-time learning environment (both physically and cognitively) to simulate the entrepreneurs world, guiding students in problem-solving with accountability, beyond the lecturer to implementing learning outputs by entrepreneurs.

The programme also provided opportunities for enterprises to gain knowledge objectively through peer-learning from academics, mentors, and students- particularly beneficial for individuals that may not have access to this type of network/support ordinarily.

Firstly, we want to increase participation amongst social enterprises, sustainable enterprises and local community groups. Given that their primary focus is on social and community, rather than commercial impact, it can sometimes be difficult for such enterprises to gain access to the type of supports available to other enterprises to grow and develop, and so the business consulting programme allows for more inclusivity for enterprises whose core objective is to achieve a social, societal or environmental impact. In addition, this will help both enterprises and students to learn about and engage with these very important industry/societal challenges, with a view to providing innovative solutions for social impact.

Secondly we want to provide a more explicit/formal tangible recognition for all stakeholders involved in the programme e.g. the creation of a digital badge for this programme. To achieve this objective, we are currently working with the UL Sustainability Group to identify collaborations where participating entrepreneurs on the programme can gain access and expertise from the sustainability group. Furthermore, we will collaborate with UL Enactus to link with their social enterprise and community groups to provide developmental support.

Currently, our teaching team is comprised of faculty, teaching assistants and mentors from a business discipline/background and so the objective around the teaching team are two-fold. Firstly, we want to increase our teaching team, and secondly we want to develop cross-disciplinary teaching teams for entrepreneurship education across the University to develop, support and augment this practice-based pedagogy for entrepreneurship education.