Dear colleagues,
I would like draw your attention to a new open educational resource for UG finalists studying German as part of their degree at a UK university. This HEA-funded resource houses learning materials and information that support the annual German Business Student of the Year competition. The resource is free for students to use after registration online at unternehmergeist.org.
The format of the competition is similar to that of the BBC television programme Dragons' Den: teams of 3 or 4 participants give a pitch (in German) for a product or service they would like to launch in Germany in the hope of securing a notional start-up investment of €30.000 from a panel of investors. The prizes for winners and runners-up are paid internships with German businesses that are either based in Germany or have subsidiaries in the UK. The competition has been convened by the Honorary German Consul, Mr Mark Green, since it first took place in 2011 at the University of Leeds. We are now making available learning materials and entry to the competition to all finalists in German and are grateful for the support of the German Embassy in London, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Deutsche Bank and the legal firm DWF LLP.
The aim of the 10-week course is to help students expand their business German and general language proficiency while fostering key transferable employability skills, such as creative problem solving, the application of numeracy and project management. The competition will support graduate mobility through the provision of funded work placement opportunities in the UK and overseas. There are also team and individual awards for exceptionally innovative concepts, outstanding language performance at the competition final on 14th May, and overall display of Teamgeist.
While all users will hopefully enjoy what we hope will be a fun and rewarding introduction to business start-up, we foresee that we won't be able to invite all participants to the competition final in May. For that reason there is a selection round in mid-April for which students will be invited to send a recording of their shortened pitch to the competition panel for review. All students receive feedback on their performance and invitations to the final are issued to participants one week later.
There is no obligation for registered students to participate in the competition and the project is offered as an optional co-curricular activity that entails no extra staffing or marking commitments. Students need no previous experience of studying business at degree level but should have spent at least one semester in a German-speaking country as part of their course. All course materials are provided by the project leads at the University of Sheffield and University of Leeds and are made available via the website @ unternehmergeist.org
I would be grateful if colleagues would promote this opportunity to their final-year students. Please get in touch if you would like any further information about any aspect of the programme or are interested in becoming involved.
Kind regards,
Giles Harrington
Dr Giles Harrington | Project Lead for Unternehmergeist.org
School of Languages and Cultures
University of Sheffield
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield S3 7RA
tel: +44 (0)114 22 22153
email: [log in to unmask]
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