Abstract

Finance courses are major offerings in UK business schools, at various levels. Seldom, do these courses move beyond theoretical modelling and textbook approaches. This is corroborated by the paltry literature on Challenge based learning (CBL) in the finance arena.

In this chapter, we describe the experience of implementing an investment fund designed by experienced members of staff and set up and run by students in one of the UK business schools in 2018. The seed capital of the Fund was donated by a variety of sources and has enabled students to use this as a jump start for their investment skills. The ethos of the Fund is not to teach students just how to invest but to put students in a real-life investment setting where they deal with the running of day-to-day activities of managing investments through a practical framework. In doing so they discover, adapt, and apply theoretical models to funds while preparing performance reports.  Students have been successful in getting jobs by demonstrating their involvement and the Fund has put them in touch with investment banks and future employers. The functioning of the Fund is analysed in this chapter.

The chapter suggests the practical steps involved in setting up such a schema of challenge-based learning, which might aid other higher education institutions and promote entrepreneurial, creative and team building activity.