← Real World Protocols
Real World Ready  ·  Layer 1: Authentic Experience

Local Vendor Partnership Challenge

Business Studies  ·  Marketing  ·  Enterprise  |  Years 9–13  |  Portable framework  ·  Requires a real school event and a staff event organiser
Created by
Maria Athanasiou, MEd, OCT
Business Studies Educator, Instructional Designer, and Founder of Collaboration Tracker
Originally designed and delivered as a Sports and Entertainment Marketing project (IDC4U) during the COVID period, when vendor donations were harder to secure than usual. Adapted for the Real World Protocols library with Maria's structure and intent kept intact.
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn →
Most business units ask students to imagine a company. This one asks them to approach one. Students research real local food vendors, cost out an actual school event, and send a genuine sponsorship proposal to a business that might say yes, say no, ask a hard question, or not answer at all. That uncertainty is the point. A generic case study cannot produce it, and no AI chatbot can substitute for the moment a real vendor responds.
What this needs before you start: a real upcoming school event with an assigned staff organiser willing to meet the class, groups of three or four students, and roughly eight to ten classes followed by the event itself. The organiser explains the event purpose, audience, date, location, supply needs, what vendors get in return, and any school rules that apply. Students ask their own questions about space, promotion, expected attendance, and logistics.
Meet the organiser
Research and build the proposal
AI as thinking partner
Send, promote, and evaluate
Before You Start
  • A real event and organiserA staff member with an actual event, actual budget gaps, and actual constraints. Not a hypothetical brief.
  • Groups of three to fourSmall enough that individual contribution stays visible, large enough to divide research, writing, and outreach.
  • The 3-3-3 Trace MapAfter meeting the organiser, each student records three decisions the group is leaning toward, three reasons for them, and three pieces of evidence from the conversation that support them. This is individual, not group, work.
  • A shared Google DocThe proposal is built collaboratively in one shared document. The digital trail inside that document becomes part of the evidence base later.
Tip: Collaboration Tracker is not used at this meeting stage. The most important evidence here is what the teacher observes directly: who asks questions, who names constraints, who connects the conversation to business concepts, and who builds on someone else's idea.
The Process
1
Meet the organiser

Students hear the real brief and ask real questions. Each student then completes an individual 3-3-3 Trace Map.

2
Set vendor criteria

Groups define what makes a suitable vendor before researching any specific business, then research local food vendors against that criteria.

3
Select and draft

Groups choose a small number of strong prospective partners and begin a shared proposal covering event overview, vendor connection, the request, value to the vendor, promotional plan, and logistics.

4
Collaboration Tracker checkpoint

After the first draft, the teacher reviews the digital trail inside the shared document. See the section below for what this does and does not do.

5
Decision Trace Conference

The teacher holds a brief two to three minute conversation with each student, asking questions informed by the digital trail, such as which part of the proposal best represents their thinking.

6
Send and respond

After teacher approval, the proposal becomes a professional vendor communication and is sent. Students prepare for every outcome: yes, no, a counter offer, questions, or silence.

7
Promote, run, and evaluate

Groups prepare promotional material, organise donation pickup and storage, assign event responsibilities, thank participating vendors, and complete a short post event evaluation.

What You Are Building Toward

The proposal itself is only one deliverable. The stronger evidence is the trail of decisions behind it.

Evidence Overlay: each group submits a short overlay alongside the proposal, covering the claims they made, the sources supporting each claim, what they do not know (a vendor's sponsorship budget, for instance), and the one verification move they made, such as contacting the vendor directly to confirm a detail.
Individual reflection: each student answers what their most important contribution was, where it is visible in the shared document, what contribution happened away from the document, and where their thinking changed over the project.
Assessment evidence: observation during the organiser meeting and group work, conversation during the Decision Trace Conference and AI reflection, and product across the proposal, promotional material, and evidence overlay.
Health and safety: as with any activity that involves external contact and event logistics, please ensure your school's own communication and safety procedures are followed for contacting vendors and running the event.

Collaboration Tracker: seeing inside the shared document

Once a group starts writing in a shared Google Doc, a teacher can see the finished proposal but not who wrote which sections, when revisions happened, or where an idea actually came from. Collaboration Tracker examines the digital trail inside the shared document to surface that pattern, so the teacher has something to ask about rather than something to grade directly.

What it shows

  • How the proposal developed over time
  • Which students contributed to which sections
  • Where meaningful revisions occurred, as opposed to minor edits
  • Whether a section was submitted late, and a starting point for asking why
  • Where the digital trail does not match what the teacher observed in class, which is often the most useful signal of all

Using it well

  • Run the checkpoint after the first draft, not continuously
  • Treat it as a prompt for the Decision Trace Conference, not as the conversation itself
  • Never rank students by output volume. Quiet contributors often do real thinking outside the document, in discussion or research
  • Pair every pattern it surfaces with what the teacher already knows about the group
About this tool. Collaboration Tracker is a commercial product created and maintained independently by Maria Athanasiou. It is not sold, distributed, or endorsed by Field-Based STEM, and this protocol works without it. A teacher without access can approximate the same checkpoint using a shared document's own version history, reviewing who edited which section and when, before holding the same Decision Trace Conference conversations.

AI as thinking partner (Real World Ready Layer 2)

These prompts build on the real organiser meeting and the group's own research. AI helps sharpen thinking about a real vendor; it does not stand in for the vendor, the research, or the group's decisions.

Years 9–10
Build our criteria

Ask a gen AI chatbot to suggest criteria for a good vendor partner. Compare its list against your group's own thinking from the organiser meeting. Which points do you keep, and which don't fit your actual event?

Find the gaps

Share your draft proposal outline with a gen AI chatbot and ask it to point out weaknesses or missing information. Decide which gaps are real and which the AI got wrong because it doesn't know your event.

Play the sceptical vendor

Ask a gen AI chatbot to respond to your draft as a busy vendor might, including a question you had not considered. Use that question to strengthen the proposal.

Check your facts

List every factual claim in your draft about the vendor or the event. Ask a gen AI chatbot which of these it could not have known and would have to be invented. Verify those claims with the organiser or the vendor directly instead.

Years 11–13
Refine the value proposition

Ask a gen AI chatbot to help sharpen the value you are offering a vendor in return for support. Test two or three versions and decide as a group which best fits this vendor, not which sounds most polished.

Anticipate the hard question

Ask a gen AI chatbot what a business owner would most likely push back on in your proposal. Prepare an honest answer rather than editing the claim to avoid the question.

Improve clarity, not content

Ask a gen AI chatbot to improve the clarity of a section you wrote, then compare the suggested version against your own. Keep your decisions and reasoning; use the AI only for wording.

Document the decision trail

Record what the AI suggested, what your group accepted, rejected, or changed, why, and how you verified anything important. Bring this to your Decision Trace Conference.

Years 11–13 Extension
Constraint stress test

Ask a gen AI chatbot what a vendor might be dealing with that would make them say no right now, unrelated to your proposal's quality. Compare against the one real external constraint your group identified from the organiser meeting.

Evidence Overlay review

Give a gen AI chatbot your Evidence Overlay draft and ask it to identify any claim that isn't actually backed by a source. Treat every flag as something to verify or remove, not something to explain away.

If the vendor says no

Ask a gen AI chatbot to help you draft a gracious response to a decline and a short internal note on what your group would try differently with the next prospect.

Post event evaluation

Ask a gen AI chatbot what makes a sponsorship partnership worth repeating next year. Check its answer against what actually happened at your event, not against theory alone.

Students should not use AI to: choose a vendor on the group's behalf, invent information about a vendor that has not been confirmed, or write a complete proposal without meaningful student input.
EXPERIENCE TRACE SCALE — LOCAL VENDOR PARTNERSHIP CHALLENGE
Level Years 9–10 Years 11–13 Years 11–13 Extension
1 Student names one constraint, one question, and one opportunity that came directly from the organiser meeting, and completes an individual 3-3-3 Trace Map. Student's 3-3-3 Trace Map connects each decision to specific evidence from the organiser meeting, not general assumption. Student can identify one observation in their trace map that could not have come from generic online research alone.
2 Student explains why the group's vendor criteria fit this specific event, in their own words. Student explains the reasoning behind the group's value proposition and can defend it against a sceptical question. Student articulates the difference between what the group can claim confidently and what remains a limitation, ready for the Evidence Overlay.
3 Student describes one AI suggestion the group used and one they rejected, with a reason. Student documents AI suggestions accepted, rejected, or changed across the proposal, with reasoning for each. Student explains how they verified at least one important claim rather than accepting it from AI or assumption.
4 Student can point to their own contribution inside the shared document and describe it in their own words. Student can discuss their contribution in a Decision Trace Conference, including work that happened outside the document. Student reflects on where a discrepancy between the digital trail and their actual contribution might arise, and why that matters.
5 Student describes what sending a proposal to a real business added that a hypothetical case study could not. Student prepares for more than one possible vendor response and adjusts the group's plan accordingly. Student completes a post event evaluation connecting the vendor's actual response to what the group would change for next time.
Field-Based STEM (ActivityPlus Ltd)  ·  Real World Protocols library  ·  Free to use and share  ·  Project design by Maria Athanasiou, MEd, OCT
© 2026 Field-Based STEM