Global Consultancy Experience "using Bloom’s taxonomy to teach consultancy skills in real life challenges that businesses face in a global context
On the 17th June – 23rd June, 21 x students from Nottingham Business School’s Full time MBA course travelled to Paris to undertake their Global Consultancy Experience module, in partnership with ESSCA School of Management – 3 additional students participated in the module but remained in the UK.
The Global Consultancy Experience module has been designed to develop, test and validate students’ academic and practice-based consultancy competences in a global context. It enables students to rapidly comprehend their assigned client project and then research and synthesise solutions using different academic perspectives before presenting their recommendations to their client on the final day (all the client projects are with French firms sourced via our partner university, ESSCA School of Management, and have a sustainability or ethical theme).
The module is structured around Bloom’s taxonomy of learning – before departing for Paris the students are invited to read some key reading materials and then complete a short multiple-choice quiz to validate if they have “understood” some core elements associated with consultancy and working in a global context.
They then spend a day in a preparatory workshop with their lecturer where they find out which client project they will be working on. During the workshop, the students participate in global working simulations, practice different questioning techniques and learn about the different stages in a consulting assignment. This helps to validate if the students have “remembered” the important narrative from their reading activity. The students then have a short period of time to prepare for their initial client meeting by preparing some initial questions, agreeing how they will work in their teams, and looking at PESTEL factors that would impact their client.
Once in Paris the students then receive a lecture, hosted by ESSCA, to talk more about French culture and how French firms conduct business. The students then meet their clients and then develop a project plan for the week so they can manage and research their client’s project using consultancy skills - this allows the students to “apply and analyse” different theoretical constructs. At the end of what is an intense week the students then present their findings and recommendations back to their client – this is a graded activity, which helps to “evaluate” student learning and competence in consulting.
Finally, students are invited to write a short reflective essay where students can “self - evaluate” the outcomes of their project, and their own personal experience of working on their consultancy projects.
The learning experience in this module helps to prepare students with valuable employability skills that they will likely use after graduating, such as teamworking, problem solving, project management, stakeholder management, influencing and resilience.
Nottingham Business School offers a portfolio of MBA courses, all of which include the Global Consultancy Experience module:
- MBA (full-time study)
- Executive MBA (modular part-time study)
- Global Executive MBA (distance learning with four campus-based weeks in three continents (Europe, South Africa and Latin America)
For further information please see the attached link https://www.ntu.ac.uk/study-and-courses/academic-schools/nottingham-business-school/study-at-nbs/mba-at-nbs
Stuart Allan ([email protected])
Lecturer, Nottingham Business School / BAM Management Consultancy Network Committee member