Dr Joanna Poon, member of BEST Research Centre in the School of the Built Environment of the University has received Highly Commended Award 2015: Emerald Literati Network for Excellence for the paper ‘Students’ views on the incorporation of commercial awareness in real estate education’ published in Property Management, Volume, 32, Issue 4 in 2014.
This paper reported the research findings of a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Research Trust funded project on ‘Evaluating how commercial awareness is developed in real estate graduates’.
The research findings of this paper showed that the UK real estate students agreed that the most important definition of commercial awareness is a ‘person’s ability to understand the economics of business’. They agreed that ‘financial’ component is the most important component of commercial awareness and it is the largest portion of their courses. The most important skill and attribute for commercial awareness development are ‘critical thinking’ and ‘ability and willingness to update professional knowledge’, respectively.
As commercial awareness is considered such an important employability skill by employers, the real estate academics are advised to take measures, such as re-visiting their courses and possibly rewriting the learning outcomes, to ensure that the way commercial awareness is delivered as part of the course is clearly communicated to the students. Furthermore, the real estate academics should also ensure that the curriculum has sufficient practical elements to support students to fully develop their commercial awareness.