Oaklands College is a large further education college with two main campuses in Hertfordshire, just north of London, providing 1,500 full and part time courses to approximately 10,000 students. The college has strong links to local employers and runs several work based programmes.
Customer challenge
Oaklands College is committed to ensuring students achieve their full potential by focussing on what it means to be successful. As part of this commitment Oaklands wanted to encourage students to understand what it takes to set up their own business.
Red Potato solution
Red Potato designed and delivered a series of half day workshops to equip students with the information they need to set up in business. The workshops were highly interactive and featured “real-life” local entrepreneurs discussing their start up story and also mentoring the students as they developed their business ideas. Red Potato stays in touch with the “Bootcamp Alumni” to see how many students go on to set up in business.
Results
- Over 90% of the participants said they found the workshops beneficial
- Over 78% of the participants would recommend the session to a friend
Three key benefits to students from the Business Bootcamp
– enabled Oaklands College students to get an insight into what it takes to be an entrepreneur
– provides access to on-going support through alumni and updated resource bank
– mentoring from local entrepreneurs
Three key benefits to Oaklands College
– Enables the College to build links and engagement with the local business community
– Allows the College to track the numbers of businesses setup and jobs created by the Business Bootcamp
– Flexible structure of the Business Bootcamp allows the sessions to be tailored to reflect student aspirations
Student feedback
“Really fun and insightful”
“Well paced, very friendly and extremely useful, many thanks”
“Very enjoyable and gave me confidence with a wider range of ideas”
Harriet Griffin Personalised Learning Coordinator at Oaklands College said:
“The Business Bootcamp project has motivated Oaklands College students to pursue their ambitions in becoming successful entrepreneurs. By running these workshops, students have been able to gain crucial insight into the process of setting up their own businesses and how, through applying these skills, in combination with their knowledge, they too can become an entrepreneur.”
Oaklands College, Discovery Centre