Activity 02

Facilitating academic delivery Management Educational Resources Centre (MERC)

Activity 2 of the AHEAD Faculty Development Grant has primarily focused on the establishment of the MERC. Besides being a resource hub, MERC has established a system that ensures the development and utilization of student-friendly digital-based teaching, learning, and assessments so that the Faculty can have an undisturbed academic program and a greater student involvement in the process of learning. Further, the MERC has provided the required facilities to uplift the quality of undergraduate research such as E-Books, Journal Databases, and analytical software. Overall, MERC will engage in capacity building and knowledge dissemination on both focus areas while strengthening the Faculty's Learner-Centered Teaching.

Creating an Online Management Education System has been identified as the first sub-activity of Activity 2. One of the most outstanding achievements under this was the E-Library of the Faculty of Management, comprising 222 e-books. At present, all the academic staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students of the Faculty are provided with the E-library facilities. As a result, the learners are provided with ubiquitous access to their textbooks irrespective of the learning location.

Facilitating undergraduate research is the second sub-activity of Activity 2. As per the SLQF level 6 requirements, the BBA curriculum is integrated with a research component carrying six credits. To strengthen this process, this sub-activity has provided the young researchers with a centralized resource hub comprising of journal databases and access to the latest versions of quantitative and qualitative analysis software such as SPSS, AMOS, and NVIVO.

Capacity Building and Knowledge Dissemination is the final sub-activity of this activity, which focuses on providing training and development programs on LMS, research methods, digital-based teaching, learning, and assessments for the undergraduate students, staff, and the non-academic staff. These training programs will also ensure the effective usage of the e-Library and analytical software facilities purchased under this activity. Moreover, the MERC will be a hub for the Faculty to serve a wider audience by providing management education through various study programs such as Certificate Course on Advanced Microsoft Office Software Applications and Business Data Analysis. Finally, this Centre will serve the national needs by knowledge dissemination and capacity building of Sri Lanka citizens to become highly skilled managers.

You are requested to contact Mr. Amila Bandara, Ms. Nishani Mudalige, or Ms. Yamuna Sivaperumaan to get more information on the Center’s activities.

Activity 03

Advancing students’ capabilities via Skills for Life Programme

The Faculty of Management, University of Peradeniya has won the Enriching Learning, Teaching, Assessment and English Language Skills Enhancement (ELTA-ELSE) development project grant under the AHEAD project. One of the two main components proposed as part of this grant is to improve academic and socio-emotional skills of the undergraduates of the Faculty of Management. Thus, predominant aim of the Faculty of Management, University of Peradeniya is to appropriately prepare the undergraduates to reach success in their forthcoming careers and career support framework is prepared for each student from the first year onwards to create a vision for their professional life. Thus, to ensure the smooth functioning of the activity, the Centre for Skills for Life is established under the AHEAD project which aims at assisting undergraduates in identifying and developing their career goals through a series of career advancement and development programs by fully exploring their inner strengths and competencies. This Centre consists of three pillars namely, Career Support Services, Internship Unit, and Events Hub. Career Support Service pillar will contribute to enhance the career orientation of the students via interviews, coaching, career counselling, job hunting, mentoring and on-campus recruitment programmes. The Internship Unit is aimed at providing internship opportunities for students to capture the nature of the modern world of work prior to step into the corporate society and this programme is divided into interim and final internship. Events Hub is responsible for conducting seminars, workshops, exposure programs, and field visits relevant to students’ career orientation and enhancement.

Team members and contact person

Dr. B.A.N. Eranda – Activity Coordinator and Contact Person

Mr. G. C. I. Gunarathne

Ms. P. R. W. M. S. C. Weerakotuwa

Ms. K. D. M. K. Weerathunga

Activity 04

Introduction to an overall activity

Given that University of Peradeniya is located away from the Western Province, where most established businesses are located, Faculty of Management has identified entrepreneurship development as an area to be capitalized. The Central and other adjoining regions will be ideal for the development of entrepreneurship. Thus, a business incubation and entrepreneurship ecosystem service (BIEES) center has been established aiming to enhance entrepreneurial competence of the undergraduates by developing their own business as job creators rather than job seekers. Moreover, it helps to create students to become intrapreneurs in corporate setting. Furthermore, the idea of BIEES goes in line with the policy makers in the current day who wants a segment of the graduates to start up their own businesses. This activity will also closely work with the industry to get their assistance to train students on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can provide the expertise knowledge and consultancies to the industry in developing industry-academic links. For example, consultancies on project reports and research/surveys can be undertaken for the benefit of the industry. In this manner, it is expected that the students and the staff of the Faculty of Management and the industry can be mutually benefited by this arrangement while achieving the sustainability of the activity.

Introduction to sub-activities

Researching entrepreneurship in a constrained setting

Researching entrepreneurial process in a given constrained environment is crucial in order to promote entrepreneurship among undergraduates. In order to address the most common challenges in venture development such as technological and social limitations the proposed activity will explore the interface between entrepreneurship, communities and institutions through a case study approach. More specifically, a number of case studies will be produced to demonstrate how entrepreneurs develop unique resources to promote entrepreneurial skills among students. Further, an entrepreneurial framework which proposes a range of potential options for venture development will be investigated to prepare students to become entrepreneurs. Further, the success of entrepreneurship development by the Faculty of Management depends to a lager extent on building networks with the industry and relevant stakeholders. Thus, possibility of using innovation ecosystem and network relations will be investigated. The modern concept of the innovation ecosystem has evolved to represent synergistic initiatives seeking new institutional models.

Undertaking entrepreneurial training

In consistent with the SLQF requirements, BIEES aims to encourage undergraduates to obtain entrepreneurial skills to promote new venture development. For this purpose, a programme namely Entrepreneurship-in-Residence is proposed to be conducted through BIEES which facilitates pairing of successful entrepreneurs and start up founders to offer students a real-world perspective of business and entrepreneurship. BIEES works with prospective student entrepreneurs helping them to launch their own businesses to conduct market research, obtain financing, and create viable businesses.

In order to accommodate this programme into the curriculum, necessary changes are proposed in the course contents to enhance graduates’ business start-ups. The BIEES also aims to update entrepreneurial knowledge being imparted across the curriculum in order to foster the entrepreneurial mind set. Further, student assessments such as case studies and field visits are planned to encourage students’ curiosity, putting them face-to-face with real-life business situations. Furthermore, BIEES focuses on introducing short courses, seminars and workshops to offer the essential entrepreneurship skills, including drafting business plans, managing finance, maintaining accounts, marketing management, resource management, project management and intellectual property management.

Providing innovation ecosystem services

Scarcity is the common problem that each and every economy, institute and individual confronts while achieving their goals. People are keen to think the new ways to achieve more results with the collaboration of other institutes. Faculty of Management also seeks new links with national and international institutes to share resources, knowledge and to have win-win situation through MOUs. By building relationship with national and international institutes, students are able to enhance their entrepreneurial skills through collaborative works. In addition to that the students who wish to start their own businesses will be able to take support from those institutes. Moreover, an ‘Innovation Day’ event will be organized for undergraduates with the collaboration of businesses to provide them with an opportunity to enhance their creative and innovative ability. In this event, representatives from industry are invited to evaluate students’ innovations.

Finally, the proposed BIEES facilitates business incubation services such as business consultancy that aims to make students and staff engagement for identifying business problems, giving consultancy, preparation of business plans, preparation of corporate plans, development of business proposals, positive thinking training with an idea to enhance students’ skills and develop the businesses. This segment of the activity also ensures the sustainability of the centre.

Team members and contact person

Ds. S.Maheswaran

Mr. T.S.S. Fernando - Contact person

Ms. M.N.F. Nuskiya

Activity 05

Enhancing English language proficiency of students through the ELM programme

1) Introduction to an overall activity

Transitioning into tertiary education is a complex and challenging process for the university entrants because they are required to adapt to a new learning environment. One of the purposes of the Accelerating Higher Education Expansion and Development (AHEAD) grant is to improve the English language skills of the undergraduates. There are three sub-activities under this activity and it aims to enhance the English language proficiency of students through the English Language for Management (ELM) Programme.

Establishment of a Language Lab

A language lab provides numerous benefits including the encouragement of self-learning, the possibility of using various methods of teaching and learning without being restricted to verbal teacher-centered delivery of lessons and the opportunity for the students to learn each lesson at their own pace. Thus, a language lab is to be implemented to complement for the effectual conducting of the ELM courses, and the storage of e-learning materials would allow the instructors to design and execute lesson plans effectively which can include group activities and projects to develop the communication and soft skills of the students.

Online Certificate Programme in Business English

This online certificate course aims to strengthen the ELM programme enabling the students to familiarize themselves with the key concepts, terms and applications in business prior to the commencement of their academic programme. This course is offered in a distance mode and delivered in a blended manner through the Moodle platform, targeting the new enrollees. This helps the students to learn at their own pace resulting in flexibility and effectiveness in learning as opposed to the relatively constricted classroom learning.

Training the academic staff members on teaching Business English & designing courses

The Business English course demands a wide range of lexical resources to be incorporated into lessons, an understanding of the business context and use of specific terminology is of utmost importance to conduct the ELM courses. Considering the fact that all staff members of the ELTU are appointed based on their language proficiency, this activity aims at training the staff members on teaching Business English and designing courses. This would act as a reinforcing mechanism through which they can be the mentors for the newly appointed ELTU staff members in the future. The training program is expected to cover the components of Training of Trainers (TOT) in the form of identifying learners’ needs, designing, delivering and evaluating the courses and continuous improvement.