The Global Scope Regional Program provides work integrated learning opportunities for international students to engage with local, regional businesses on real world challenges.
October 2017-June 2018
The Global Scope Regional Program provides the opportunity for international students to enhance their employability skills. Students work as business consultants on real world projects for real business clients in their local regional area. The students develop the ability to collaborate within diverse teams while receiving support from external mentors as they work towards delivering a meaningful outcome to different regional NSW organisations.
Global Scope Regional enables students to build their social and professional network within the NSW business community. The "hands on experience provided by the program was the best thing" according to a student who completed the program. All the students from the biggest regional cohort in July believe they improved their employability skills and that they increased their professional and social network.
Global Scope Regional is a 3-week work integrated learning experience which allows international students to engage with government agencies, enterprises and not-for-profit organisations. Throughout the experience, students are supported by the Global Scope Regional Practera App. This app guides teams to achieve the project outcomes. The innovative technology allows students to access all learning content, collaborate with team members, submit and upload deliverables/documents and gain feedback from mentors and clients multiple times throughout the program.
The project involved one hundred students from the University of Wollongong, University of Newcastle and University of New England as well as over ten regional organisations who engaged a student team. Collaboration, communication, critical thinking and teamwork were ranked as the skills students developed most when participating in the Global Scope Regional program.
The program delivered value for industry, students and government. This cross sector collaboration not only provided a NSW Government supported opportunity for students but engaged industry who gained value from international students' skill and knowledge. As part of their final deliverables, student teams present in a boardroom to relevant clients and colleagues of the outcome of their business case. All the clients were very impressed with the high quality of work from students and the practical recommendations that could be implemented by the organisation.
Emotional intelligence, collaboration and communication were ranked as the most challenging elements of the program by students. Engagement from universities with small international student populations was a challenge and required extra support from Practera. Development of the ecosystems required extensive local economy on-boarding from which future programs will benefit.
For more information on Global Scope or Practera, please go to our website: https://practera.com/ Or contact: programs@practera.com
