Edition 2021

Professors, students, alumni, administrators and higher education professionals… 61 participants with various profiles took part in this unique peer-to-peer learning experience.

• My innovation in 180 seconds” pitch competition

13 innovative projects competed for the TBS Innovation Awards 2021 and the final in the form of a 180-second pitch competition.

The winners of this Edition:

Best Digital Shift category​

• LOOPS, Cameron GUTHRIE, Elisabeth BERTRAND-DAUSSET​

Best Upgrade category​

•  Live my life as a corrector, Carole BASCIO, Karine VILLENEUVE​

Best Fresh Design category​

• French kiss, Soumyadeb CHOWDHURRY​

Public’s favorite​

• Virtual fly-in, Margarita SERVERA, Sofia NIETO, Beatriz MARCO​

Innovator’s favorite​

• Board game – Understand the costs! Françoise DEVENYI​

You will find a detailed description of the projects below.

Artemis is a management simulation that fully integrates strategic and environmental issues. In addition to defining business and corporate strategies, students must make a variety of decisions in the areas of marketing, production, procurement, finance and logistics. With the “Artemis” simulation, participants manage an industrial company faced with both the traditional demands of shareholder profitability and the rise of current environmental and societal concerns. In the original version of the simulation, students work in teams (within firms and universes) in rooms under the supervision of professors who act as coaches and with whom they constantly exchange. Regular lectures followed by question-and-answer sessions allow them to progress in the game and acquire new skills. All students interact physically, including through contracts.

The Sesame Online project involved 294 final year students working in 49 virtual teams on one of the 17 UN sustainable development goals (SDG). The project was developed to replace the historical “Sesame Consulting Mission” during the first lockdown in France. The goal of the project was to train students to address complex societal problems using a project-based learning pedagogy and in so doing develop students’ higher order thinking skills.

Students were spread across six countries and used Microsoft Teams groupware to share their work, communicate by videoconferencing and interact with their tutor. Students all followed the same online course, the TBS MOOC “Thinking Complexity”^* to learn the systems thinking and modelling skills necessary to understand and act on a sustainable development issue. The groups worked on thirteen different SDGs (see annex 2) and identified and exchanged with domain experts to validate their modelling and the pertinence of their recommendations.

Based on student self-assessments, the quality of work evaluated by tutors and the encouraging feedback from domain experts, the Sesame Online project was an overwhelming success.

According to the World Economic Forum, such complex problem-solving skills tops are critical for the 21^st century. We suggest that this project that helps students develop such systems thinking skills should become an integral part of the TBS curriculum.

*Currently 6900 students enrolled in 40+ countries on www.iversity.org

Following the lockdown in France and across the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic we decided to convert the TBS Summer School in Toulouse & Barcelona in an online programme. President Macron’s announcement on 13th April 2020 put an end to any hopes of an on campus program. We launched the creation of a new Summer School product:  The Online Summer Courses. Online courses taught live for international students. Creation Time: 10 days. Commercialisation time: 6 – 9 weeks.

The sucess of the creation fo the Online Summer Courses was grounded on 4 pillars:

• Academic Quality
• Professional Immersion
• Student Networking
• Cross-cultural Skills

24th April : The new website created and written by the International Team goes online with a new slogan and branding, new course offer, new syllabi adapted to the online format, pricing, and adapted registration form.

Total n° students to participate in the Online Summer Courses 15th June to 24th July : 103. 

Our 360º Virtual Fly-In Experience emerges from the need to bring TBS closer to our main partners and prescribers: the college counselors, this year in a digital and innovative way. 

Every year, we organize an on-site Fly-In – in which we invite a group of college counselors to visit the Toulouse and Barcelona campuses to live the TBS experience offering them added value activities like workshops, conferences and pedagogical activities. 

This event launched in 2015 by the Barcelona campus and then extended to the 2 French campuses is now on its 7th Edition, having welcomed a total of 165 participants until now who have brought more than 100 candidates and 40 enrolments for the Bachelor program.

Our main objective is to organize a recurring event that allow us to meet our partners, remind them of who we are and what we offer and strenghten our relationship. It is always a very lively and warm moment where a strong group dynamic is created.This year, we wanted to keep the experience alive, so we have adapted to the pandemic restrictions: innovating and turning it digital with a redesigned concept. 

“Given that you cannot come to the TBS campuses to explore our cities and interact with students, faculty and staff, TBS comes to you.”

Thanks to this Virtual reality experience we will allow our prescribers and other targets to visit TBS campuses and cities and meet with students, faculty and staff at any time. 

1. For the last 2 years the B3 students on the Bachelor International Business major have been doing the Bach’Up project.
2. In the project they work in teams, with the help of their teachers (Najma AZMUT and Yvon SHOLLAERT)  to develop a feasible business idea and a Business Plan for its launch.
3. At the ‘Bach’Up Day’, the best six teams pitch their ideas to a jury of professors (including the Director of the Bachelor and the head of the IB filiere) and representatives of TBSeeds.
4. The incubator offers the winning ideas (best projet and the jury’s ‘Coup de Cœur’) free entrepreneurship workshops and/or support for the development of their project.

1. Game board :

• 33 cards : 17 yellow cards (51 conceptual questions) and 16 blue cards (48 calculation questions)
• 1 card = 3 questions with 3 level of difficulties  (easy, medium, difficult)
• 1 game board, 1 hourglass, 1 dice, 2 pawns, 1 game rules

2. Teams’ organization

• 1 game board for 2 teams
• 1 team = 3 students. Each team determines the order in which each player will play: Student X will answer all along the game question  1; Student Y = question 2; Student Z = question 3.

3. Game development

• The player’s team throws the dice and moves the pawn forward.
• A player from the adverse team pulls the card from the stack of the color of the pawn’s field, reads question 1.
• After the 30 seconds elapse, the player designated to answer question 1 may describes the concept (yellow card) or gives his answer by explaining the calculation (blue card).
• If the given answer is right, the pawn stays on the field. If not, it’s moved back one field per answer not given or wrong, and we move on to the 2nd question, then to the 3rd question. The team’s turn ends after the 3 questions.

In order to best meet the educational objectives of the B1 sales module, I decided to rethink this course in order to reinforce the positive points (quality of roleplays, debriefings and sharing of experiences,…) and to find solutions for areas to improve (student work method, inefficient double section courses, optimize time in presentation ,…) with the help of our teaching engineers and the involvement of the teaching team. Each part of the course was scripted in depth in order to construct a progressive course alternating face-to-face sessions and remote personal work with guidance, allowing students to progress in stages, while respecting the hourly volume of teachers and at constant costs.

Overall, each project is a win-win configuration through cross-  functional and interdisciplinary teamwork of students with  practitioners and research faculty for academic and business  outcomes.

Timeframe, process and activities: Students and faculty will inquire within the corporate and  institutional environment of the partner company/public  organization as sponsor of the project. Projects evolve between 3  to 6 months’ length on a part-time base in small groups of 5 to 7  participants, since students have often some other classes  building their employability in an educational setting and degree  pursuit.

The professional partner organizations provide tutors (managers)  to answer corporate questions leading to the extension of  knowledge and a joint strategic research analysis approach.

The goal of this project was to develop a pedagogical innovation that would allow students to better understand what is expected of them during the final exam of the first year “Marketing Fundamentals” module.

Step 1:  All students log on to the C@mpus platform and take a remote exam to prepare them for their final exam at the end of the semester. Each student then anonymously uploads his or her completed document on the platform.

Step 2: The system randomly assigns 4 documents to be corrected to each student.

Step 3: Students meet their teacher in section. The teacher unrolls the answer key and answers the questions. Then each student corrects online the 4 papers assigned to him/her according to the correction grid and grading scale provided. At this stage, the teacher is there to answer the questions.

Step 4: Each student receives his grade as a student (average of the 4 grades given on his assignment) + 1 grade as a corrector (grade given by the system).

This project took place between dec 2020 and February 2021. About 60 students from TBS Barcelona were invited to take part in a consulting project (with no credit or financial compensation) aiming to help the Barcelona nightlife industry. In the end, 19 students from B1 to MSc accepted to work under my supervision (Fabien Pecot) during 2 monhts in addition to their classes. Activities took place in the evening and in the weekend. We used secondary data compiled by the library and by the students’ themselves. We also used the results of 4 focus groups conducted by the students, and of interviews with academic and professional experts. With all of this information, we wrote a report of about 50 pages for professionals and for the media.

This pedagogical experiment aims

1. To challenge and to reward high potential students with an opportunity to push their limits,
2. To build stronger relations with the Barcelonese ecosystem through the promotion of our best students’ know how,
3. To test the model of cross fertilization for which pedagogical, research and clinical activities.

Format : world cafe

Created in the United-States, the world cafe is a creative group process enabling concrete proposals to emerge through participants’ shared ideas and collective intelligence.

Targets

• Companies
• TBS Students (Bachelor, MIM, MS & MSc)

Topics covered

Recruitment and CSR with 2 key axes :

• What are companies’ CSR policies ?
• What CSR projects and actions attract students to a company ?

The principle of this event

The  participants  are  divided  into  a  mixed  group  (students  with

companies). They take part in 3 round tables :

Pedagogical innovation during recent times [stemming from the impact of pandemic on all fronts] has been necessary to manage and fulfil students’ expectations and create value for them.

A teaching session is the blank canvas for a teacher to fill-in with content, context, practices, strategies, and interventions inspired by pedagogy. The project implements the innovative KISS [Keep it Simple and Sweet] pedagogy consolidating from the tenets of constructive alignment, design thinking, context-based learning, adaptive teaching, and stealth assessment, using novel technologies VIZIA, MIRO-board, and TWINE.

The pedagogy comprises of a set of practices that advocates the ideology – ‘Teachers are new Creative Designer in Higher Education’ and ‘Co-creation through co-design’, both meant to facilitate learners (in MSc Digital Marketing and Ecommerce) to acquire diverse set of competencies, knowledge and soft skills, that will have the potential to enhance their learning engagement and experience, which is critical to managing and fulfilling expectations of students in higher education.

The KISS pedagogy can be adopted for myriad learning environments – face-face, online and hybrid, and for a wide type of courses – theory, practice-based, and software programming, which makes it very dynamic and creative, withstanding the uncertain and complex and rapidly changing situations posed by any crisis such as the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The results (student feedback) of the implementation in two theoretical modules and two programming modules taught to TBS students in 2020-21, demonstrates the effectiveness of pedagogy to enhance student satisfaction, in hybrid and online learning environments.

When designing a curriculum, program managers have a clear idea of what courses should be integrated and how they are linked together. However, students have a much more segmented reading and do not necessarily make the connection between the different courses.  

We propose to structure either the entire curriculum or a part of it around a core course unit (the conductor course), centered on an ambitious project that students develop by mobilizing and articulating knowledge and skills from other courses called “provider courses”. We use the analogy of an orchestra because each family of instruments each musician plays their own score in the service of the interpretation of a musical work and under the coordination of a conductor. 

In the B3 Innovation Management track, this system has been implemented around the entrepreneur-ship course with the project of creating an innovative and sustainable company and the ambition of joining the incubator or competing in global challenges. The accounting/finance and market research courses are at the service of this structuring project.   

Our innovation responds to many problems that schools and programs are facing today, especially the multiplication of projects or the insufficient pedagogical coordination between the instructors. 

This approach brings innovation to the way knowledge is transmitted by federating a set of courses around a project. It does not interfere with the freedom of instructors to innovate and teach as they wish within their module.