At the initiative of Kutaisi International University School of Management, the second PODCAST Championship Spring 2023 was held for MGMT School’s Students. In Spring Semester (2023) championship seven student/speakers have been participated. In addition, before the championship, a group of student Mentor-Trainers has been created. They provided meaningful, structural support to the future speakers in preparing for ten-minutes podcast pitches. All project participants worked intensively for several weeks to present their pitches to the audience. The topics prepared by them were diverse and heterogeneous. The Spring Semester (2023) PODCAST Championship has four winners: Firs Place Winner - Tafo Sanaya, Niko Kasrashvili took the second place, third place went to Lasha-Giorgi Tsintsadze and Anri Azrumelashvili became the student's favorite choice. Each speaker of the championship was evaluated by the jury on the basis of pre-established criteria. Student speakers had the opportunity to present and share their experiences, conclusions, views with other students, talk about values, personal successes and failures.
The head of the MGMT School, KIU, Professor Natia Zedginidze notes: “holding such championships in the university and, specifically, in the School of Management, has a special impact on students. The PODCAST Competition project contributes to the student’s skills multifaceted development. In particular, it helps students to further strengthen and develop the skills defined by the BSc in Management program curriculum. The project is focused on strengthening the skills of creative ideas’ formation, research, acquisition of new knowledges, presentation of one's opinion and persuasion of the audience. Strategically, taking into account the best interests of the students and the possible long-term results of the project, the PODCAST Championship as a project is valuable and, in the future, the winner speakers will be able to participate in international PODCAST Competitions on behalf of the university".
Under the PODCASt Competition project, MGMT School’s students SUPPORT TEAM was established. In accordance with the pre-defined functions, they independently provided logistics, competition newsletter content, marketing materials and issues of the event.
This project is very popular among students of the School of Management. The first championship was held in the fall of 2022 and was well received by the students. For detailed information, visit the link: https://www.kiu.edu.ge/uploads/MGMT_PODCAST_COMPETITION_Newsletter_18.pdf
It should be noted that the School of Management plans to hold the competition regularly, per semester. Moreover, MGMT School will conduct a nationwide PODCAST Championship among universities.
There are many analogues of the PODCAST Championship in different countries of the world and it is one of the best practices for the speakers to share their personal, professional, business experiences and thoughts to the public and, thus, help and support the aspirations of the audience.
