UCD Quinn School of Business Blog

Happenings at Quinn

Finally we’re starting to have some nice weather, and just as the amount of time being spent on assignments and study is being increased! Typical! The few days since we’ve been back from midterm have been very busy with continuous assessment exams along with various other work and events.

This morning, we had a Student/Staff Consultative Forum, where a representative from each class meets with the Subject Heads to discuss issues that have arisen and things that are working well and not so well so that there is continuous improvement in how the courses are run each year. The lecturers are very nice and approachable so that issues generally are resolved outside of these meetings but it is nice to have them to also get feedback on the progress of the class in general.

Last week Séan Gallagher of Dragon’s Den fame was in NovaUCD giving a talk as part of the Entrepreneurs Live series that is run each semester where entrepreneurs are invited in to give a talk about how they set up their business along with insights and tips for any one thinking of setting up their own business. They are very interesting to listen to and a lot of good quality advice can be picked up to add to the Entrepreneurship courses that are run in Quinn. Podcasts of recent talks can be found here.

We also had two case study competitions being run by Professor Peter Clarke who has put a lot of time and effort into the organisation of both the competition and the cases themselves. The case studies were given to us the week before the break. One case was only open to students of the Advanced Management Accounting course as it is an accounting case study, kindly sponsored by the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants with cash prizes for the winning teams. It also served as a portion of study for the final exam which is an added benefit! The finalists will probably have to present on their findings once it is announced.

The second case study was open to any one although the teams needed some Accounting specialisation students as there were significant accounting issues in it. The prize for this case study was to represent UCD at the Irish finals of the CIMA Global Business Challenge, where the winning team will go on to represent Ireland in Singapore in the Global Final.

The case study we had for that was an interesting challenge which required preparing a report on various issues that the specific company was facing which was due before the break.  Teams were then shortlisted after that and presentations to select the winning team were held last week. Our team learned a lot at the Marshall Case Study Competition particularly in the area of giving presentations and fortunately our hard work in improving this since returning from MICC has paid off as we were selected for the CIMA competition. This competition is slightly different as it is held in one day in the Quinn School of Business (on the 13th of June) and we are also given the case study beforehand which is based on the TOPCIMA exam, however, as in the exam there will be slight adjustments made to the case on the day.The case study can be found here if you fancy seeing what they are like.

The case studies are a great opportunity for students to apply what they have learned through the years and see if they could solve real life business problems. Most classes use case studies as part of the learning experience but I would highly recommend that students participate in the competitions in Quinn even in first year. While you may not win, as was the case with our team in our first year in the competition to represent UCD at Marshall. it will definitely stand you in good stead in the future, both in exams and in other competitions. As Séan Gallagher said at his talk last week, “you should not be afraid to fail, as it is how you learn“. This was definitely what happened in our case as the learning experience are huge both in analysing business situations, to generating realistic solutions and even in presenting resulting in us winning the second time round. Also, it is a great topic for interviews, employers love talking about case competitions as they are times when you have worked under pressure in a business situation. Also, if anyone has any questions, please leave a comment and we would be more than happy to answer!

Fionn

Add comment April 1st, 2009