Accessing TQEF funding to enrich the student experience

Students from Newcastle Business School have been presented with prizes by industry professionals after developing an innovative board gamed exploring organisational human resources strategies.

To develop their games the two winning groups drew on real life experiences gained during their placement years with Disney and Newcastle Building Society. Their work was then judged by external HR professionals to see how well it reflected organisational structure and knowledge of HR practices.   

Newcastle Business School Senior Lecturer Helen Tracey says the idea for the exercise, and inviting external judges, was to enhance both the learning experience for students and their career prospects.

She added: “We asked the students to design an HR-focused board game based on an organisation they were familiar with, and then to produce a prototype of their ideas that could be judged by our invited HR professionals. It’s the second time I have run the workshop, but this year I was successful in achieving an internal grant from the Teaching and Quality Enhancement Fund via a competitive process. The grant enabled us to provide bespoke materials and also funded prizes for the best designs.”

First prize went to Siobhan, Izzy and Sean who all spent their placement year in different parts of The Walt Disney Company, which inspired their game, ‘Cast Member Climb’. The judges were impressed with both the team’s design and their incorporation of a high number of HR topics via question cards.

The second highest scoring team were Abigail, Lily and Amy with their design ‘The Game of Life; Placement Edition’ which was based on Abigail’s placement year at Newcastle Building Society. Abigail was keen to show the game to her placement Manager as a fun and interactive overview of some of her experiences.

Developing the Board Games provided students with the opportunity to engage with both HR practices and HR professionals, providing them with ‘real-world’ experiences. The success of the workshop means it will run again next year with the anticipated continued support of local organisations.