Syddansk Universitet meets Windesheim University of Applied Sciences

After a small get-together on Monday night and a detailed tour of the Sports facilities of the Sport and Event Park Esbjerg (SEPE) on Tuesday afternoon, the students were introduced to the case, which was formulated by SEPE. Dutch student Eline was really impressed by the amount of different sports activities that can be done at the facilities, which are not only “usual sports like football and handball, but also for example curling or icehockey”.

 
Former Sport and Event Management Master student Louise was presenting her work as a Sport and Event coordinator at the Sport and Event Park Esbjerg. She is organizing events reaching from indoor circuses, Dart or spinning challenges to events like the “Bierfest” or a big obstacle race. Hung, who is a Bachelor student in the second semester at SDU pointed out that it can be difficult to see exactly where you are going with your studies and that it was really helpful to have Louise talking about her work to get a perspective on where the journey could take you after finishing your education.

 The case study which was presented by Alexander, a SDU student doing his internship at SEPE, was dealing with designing a water/swim event that connects to the SEPE extreme and the SEPE bike challenge. The students had to create a proposal in form of a presentation that defines the product, place, price and promotion of the event.  

As Martin, student in the Bachelor Program Sport and event management mentioned, “the case was challenging, especially at start, because it took some time to pinpoint, what exactly we wanted to write about”, however, all groups were happy about this form of a practical case study. In terms of the group work on the case studies, all groups reported that they believe they benefitted greatly from this cooperation between the two Universities. Martin emphasized that “mostly because we do not have a lot of people from different countries in our Bachelor, it’s a great experience to work with people from a different culture for a change”. The group of Eline, Andreas and Fidan, for instance, encountered a funny crosscultural misunderstanding. While making the budget, confusions arose about the pricing of the event, as two of the students were thinking in Danish Crowns while Eline was struck by how expensive the event would be as she was thinking in terms of Euros. Apart from small misunderstandings, the students especially highlighted that the combination of the intense practical experience of the Dutch students combined with the more theoretical approach of the Danish students made a perfect fit for working on the case. Dorte was strongly impressed by the practical experience her group partner Rik had in event management, while Rik was surprised by the high quality of his group mates English, “I always thought my English was pretty good, but now I realise that I am actually searching for words a lot”. Hearing about the strong practical focus of the Dutch program and all the internships the students do during their Bachelor program, some of the Danish students started thinking about, how they could include an internship in their studies as well.

Rik was, amongst others, particularly fond of the after class activities “I didn’t expect so much entertainment”. As most of the Dutch students had never been to an ice-hockey match before, the match which ended with Esbjerg winning after shootouts was an exciting experience. While the students and teachers were standing really calm in the beginning of the game, it got quite intense towards the end, “we were even banging against the glass and trying to sing along with the Danish songs even though we don’t speak the language” Rik said laughing. Another special highlight for the students was the visit of a Handball game in Blue Water Dokken on Wednesday night. Team Esbjerg unexpectedly lost the game against Randers. The Dutch guest students jokingly blamed Esbjerg’s defeat on Dutch player Estavana Polmans pregnancy leave “without her Team Esbjerg is just not that strong”. Being able to take a picture with Estavana after the game made the evening even better for SDU’s guests from the Netherlands.

 
The students presented the case results on Thursday afternoon. While there was still room for improvement, especially as the students only worked on the case for a day, teachers from both Universities as well as Jacob Drachmann Haag from SEPE were really satisfied with the results the students presented.

 After a short evaluation of the jury the winners were announced.

The winning team Claes, Rik and Dorte made a proposal for a swim challenge called “SEPE swim survival”, with elements of an obstacle race to be carried out at Marbæk Lake and the beach. Jakob from SEPE was really impressed by the variety of ideas the students came up with, reaching from more family and kids oriented events to more extreme challenges for age 16+.

The students, as well as teachers enjoyed some drinks, snacks and small talk and it was obvious that by the end of this intense week some new friendships and long lasting contacts had been made.

 The exchange was a full success and both sides are hoping for future collaboration between the two universities.

For more information contact: Chris Horbel, horbel@sam.sdu.dk