Full Project name: Business Experience Workshop 2023/24: Systematization of students’ business experiences through active learning workshops

Active from/to: October 2023 – March 2024 (September 2024)

Research Team: Prof. Marcella Mariotti (Principal Investigator), M.A. Gaia Varone (Project Coordinator), Prof. Fabio Marra (Project Jr. Coordinator), Ms. Sara Cucchi (Project Assistant), Ms. Matilde Giugni (Placement Japan Unit intern), Mr. Giuseppe Garassino (IT Developer), Prof. Hirofumi Utsumi (Project Advisor)

Participants: 43 Ca’ Foscari students and 14 students from different Japanese Universities for a total of 57 students.

What is this project about?

The main goal of this project is to bring together students with different backgrounds and encourage them to think together in Japanese so to develop, as a group, comprehensive proposals to address environmental, economical and social sustainability issues, while also thinking about how to concretize them in a possible future start-up.
In this first edition, the students, once divided into groups, were asked to express in a preliminary survey in what ways they were interested in sustainability and then to think of how that interest could be applied to the specific context of Venice and Ca’ Foscari University.

In the end, the 6 group developed 6 different projects:
–  Electric boats charging stations in Venice
– Supporting Incoming student’s easy life in Venice
– Sustainable students community dormitory
– Overtoursim: Authentic and Accessible Venice
– Smart benches around Venice and community pergola at Ca’ Foscari University
– Adding green roofs at Ca’ Foscari University

The workshop was organized around 5 in-person meetings (circa one per month from October 2023 to March 2024) during which executives from Mitsubishi Corporation (financial sponsor of the project), alongsides the BEW research team, actively take part in the activities and enriches the students’ experience by supplying technical and professional insights, while also helping them to learn how to bring forward and comminicate their ideas.

After the last workshop meeting with the students in March 2024, the BEW research team continued working on analyzing and organizing the outputs, that resulted in a presentation held in September 2024 at the University of Salamanca titled “Empowerment through the Business Experience Workshop 23/24: translating as community (trans)formation process“.
Moreover, the results were used to optimize the Cafoscari Jisho database. The technical optimization for the the Cafoscari Jisho APP was carried out by Mr. Giuseppe Garassino.

Look at the development of the BEW1 group projects on our Instagram page @jalea_unive!