Abstract:
Aligning with our experiences as educators, studies show that the most gifted and
talented students benefit from program enrichment beyond the traditional
classroom. This paper discusses the proposed extension to the large and complex
first-year team-based learning program at The University of Auckland Business
School. Our proposal is to select the top 30 of approximately 1700 first-year
students to participate in a project that integrates academic content and high
performance teamwork in a real-world context. This is not normally experienced
by students until final year studies if at all. Given the scale of the program, this
unique study contributes to the literature by furthering our understanding of gifted
and talented students performing in teams while completing a highly challenging
task. An extension of this project will be to monitor this cohort of students
throughout their studies and into future job opportunities.