The students in the class must explain why they have chosen to collaborate with a certain company and set up goals for their collaboration. The students must consider academic and personal objectives and reflect on what it will take for them to achieve these objectives in the specific project.
The purpose of the exercise is that students realise as early as possible what they would like to accomplish in the project. Reflecting on their choice of collaboration partner and setting up individual targets will strengthen the students’ academic competences and their experience of the relevance of their academic subject for their own future.
Moreover, the students may also explain to their fellow students who they are going to collaborate with and how, what their focus points and objectives for the collaboration are, and why this collaboration is relevant to their academic subject.
The students will have five minutes to prepare a brief presentation where they address the items in handout 1.
The students will then move to stand in a circle so that they can all see each other.
In turn, the students now make brief presentations based on their preparation explained above.
Afterwards the students may ask each other questions if they have heard something they would like to know more about. The teacher may also address issues from the presentations and ask questions.
The students must now sit alone and formulate four to six concrete objectives (handout 2) that they have identified so far for their company project. They may start by: “I would like to get experience in...”, “I would like to bring my academic competences into play by becoming better at...”, “I would like to become particularly good at...” etc.
The teacher follows up in class and encourages the students to keep their objectives so that during their company collaboration they are able to consider if they are actually working towards their initial objectives.
