Workshop in the course of Human Resources Management
When Unicorn decided to switch to digital work from home, because of the situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, they managed to fully implement this decision within two days. Now, we meet each other mostly virtually, collaborating remotely. Unicorn University is not an exception: we have moved all our educational activities into the digital world by the end of March. Remote conferences, lectures, and examinations are quite commonplace; a two-day workshop for 32 students takes the requirements for interactivity and contents of development activities to a whole new level. Despite the absence of face-to-face contact with students, the quality and purpose of our workshops remained undiminished – providing another precedent for fully online operation 🙂.
Students of Human Resources Management were supposed to come up with solution designs or a general concept of HR activities based on practical job specifications, with emphasis on getting as close to real life as possible. Job specifications, initial instructions, and group work – everything went smoothly. Students worked in groups, sharing ideas and information through virtual rooms. All participants constantly communicated online, scheduling their team meetings / checkpoints and dividing topics and tasks among themselves. They were also able to handle situations when some colleagues had to attend parallel lessons on day 2 of the workshop, so they had to complete their tasks early. When lecturers checked on random discussion threads, intermediate outputs met their expectations and no fundamental interventions or directions were necessary.
All in all, students were supposed to complete 9 tasks (or blocks): 3 from the perspective of the HR project management strategy and 6 from the perspective of various HR disciplines. In 2 days, they did a great job and often even the facilitators / lecturers gained new insights and valuable inspirations. The students’ involvement was great – you could see from their outputs and their presentations that they were not driven just by their desire to meet the minimum requirements necessary to complete the workshop, but rather approached their assigned topics as thought experiments.
We have received some feedback for future workshops, and next year, we will be more specific when it comes to situational context of workshop topics (we will pick a specific company, set parameters, and prepare situations with tighter limits), to better simulate real-life situations.
Ing. Václav Žárský and Ing. Sára Bradová, Human Resources Management Lecturers
Workshop in the course of Project Management
On April 18-19, a two-day online Project Management workshop was held using the MS TEAMS communication software. About 40 students of both regular classroom and combined study attended the workshop. They worked in 6 teams. Each team had their own private group (virtual meeting room) established in MS Teams, accessible only by students of the group / team. However, lecturers were able to visit all groups. At the start of the workshop, each team received a topic and then students were assigned to their teams.
The first benefit of the online workshop was the combination of teamwork and individual work. During the online workshop, team members were able to divide their tasks among themselves in joint meetings in the virtual meeting room and sign out (if they wished) to work on them undisturbed. If they encountered any questions or problems, they were able to get back to the virtual meeting room. For students, this was better and more efficient than sitting together in the same room for a long time (we have received positive feedback from students).
The second benefit was faster and more efficient communication with lecturers. If there were any ambiguities, a lecturer could enter the virtual meeting room of the group immediately to help answer questions of team members. As the lecturer did not have to travel from one room to another, the communication was much more efficient (once again, we have received positive feedback from students). In this way, the lecturer was able to effectively check upon the progress of various teams.
A final benefit of the online workshop was its time-saving quality. As the workshop was fully online, students could have signed in from anywhere, if they had the Internet access. They did not have to commute (at a weekend and mostly from a great distance). This is unquestionably a great benefit for students of combined study and especially for foreign students (more positive feedback from students).
Ing. Hoang Pham Long, PhD., Project Management Lecturer
Our emphasis on practical usability is a cornerstone of the education at Unicorn University. We train future team leaders, project managers, and generally experts who will work in functional teams. To experience the teamwork, the stress associated with approaching deadlines, and the communication across your team and with the customer is a valuable experience which students can acquire rather painlessly. Weekend workshops provide an excellent complement to our regular lessons and we believe they greatly contribute to our students’ education. Combining theoretical knowledge with creative work, students can test their abilities on quite realistic tasks.
Ing. Jindřich Čadík, Project Management Lecturer
And what are students saying about our workshops and hackatons?
“The workshop not only provided us with expert know-how, it also taught us to work within a larger team full of diverse people. We have clarified some issues and attempted to find a way of boosting a failing company. It was challenging, but we had fun, as we could unleash our creativity. There was also enough feedback to help us keep our ideas on track.”
“We were happy to get together as a team and work along each other. The assigned problem was quite interesting and we have definitely learned a lot of new stuff from economy. Also, when we had any questions, our teachers were just a call away, which was quite helpful.”
