Abstract
In 2021, recognising the perceived strengths and risks, along with the tumult experienced by students in a Covid-19 university context, a coaching program was wrapped around the Global Enterprise Experience (GEE) to support student learning. This program involved the training, development and support of a 59 strong volunteer coach team. This paper reports the experiences of these coaches and the perceived impact of the coaching program from their perspective. Coaches participated in a semi-structured interview comprising open-ended questioning. Each coach was asked to voice their sense of did they have impact? Narrative responses were transcribed, collated within NVivo, and analysed using thematic analysis and concept mapping techniques (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2019; Terry, Hayfield, Clarke & Braun, 2017). Findings suggest a volunteer coach belief that they had impact upon student learning. Impact was described in numerous ways. The program was valuable to coaches and team leaders alike. Most especially that as an offering the program has impact and is scalable and sustainable. This finding is noteworthy as scalability and sustainability in the mix of offering students support within experiential learning contexts remains challenging for educators and institutions to resource. These findings suggesting the coaching program impacted our volunteer coaches, an unanticipated positive finding, reveals a potent sustainability factor that might now be leveraged creating benefits for both coaches and team leaders alike. In so doing, this study contributes to understanding of coaching undergraduates engaging in experiential GVTs, with practical implications of structuring support.