How do we go "extreme"? Ask this question: "What DO we owe entrepreneurial learners?"
Herman - I know that you have seen this (call it a manifesto) that I developed for ICSB and has been shared by HE Innovate, OECD, and others.* <https://bit.ly/2021EntEdManifesto> Forgive me, Herman, but you cannot improve human learning much with just a few clever exercises. You want to go "extreme", then we need much, much more. For example, how many people think that "hands-on" equals "experiential"? How do you know something is genuinely experiential if you do not assess rigorously? How do you make something truly experiential without a dep understanding of how humans learn? **
The two important pieces that we can address right now are that:
1) we need desperately to assess our impact rigorously. What if AACSB chose to require that? (and not self-servingly.) We know how to do that! But we are not doing that (simply look at the myriad of papers/articles that either lack the slightest expertise at how humans learn, non-generalizable research design, or both.) This is NOT a place for those who don't have a very strong background in education theory & practice. But you can get there with help! This IS fixable. We already have the right people working on this. And there are HUGE opportunities.
How do we get started? One particularly good gateway assessment is HE Innovate's EPIC tool which offers a multi-faceted assessment tool designed to be developmental. Another is EntreComp for entrepreneurial skills.*** Another still in progress is a theory-driven (cognitive science) assessment of the entrepreneurial mindset. Watch this video - and let me know how my friends & I can help you get you & your school involved.**** <NAG link>
ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY: Huge publishable research possibilities!
2) We also need to take advantage of advances in education theory & practice. Thought experiment: We replace an entrep professor with a good kindergarten teacher. The students would be at an initial disadvantage but how many months till the kids got a better education? I've found this insight is not popular, lol. Read more at the first link and consider another thought experiment: What if the government required that every instructor must have thorough training (say 250 hours) in education theory & practice? (Any of my Dutch friends wish to chime in re BKO?)
OUR OPPORTUNITY: Yes, envision how much better our students would be! Visibly better. and maybe more important, external stakeholders will also be thrilled.
How do we get started? What if we developed a rigorous educator training program? We have people who could do this. At the end of the first link is a list of the people that *I* listen to and learn from - please follow them! To start: Read Colin Jones' "How to Teach Entrepreneurship" book. And read almost anything by Andy Penaluna. To paraphrase Andy: If you want to get better at teaching and assessment, talk to the people who already know how to do this. The "renegades" have started down this road; will you join us?
And one final, important positive takeaway! If someone forced universities to do rigorous assessments and serious educator training, which b-school department would do the best? A former AACSB president said entrepreneurship is the only program that could do that well. In fact, he yelled at us for not doing that :)
p.s. again, if interested, email me directly.
Cheers <and ducking :) >,
Norris
* The response has been both gratifying (lots of cheers) and disappointing (almost zero interest in taking action, lol). But.. huge opportunities! Again, how can my friends & I help?
** Counter-examples include Doan Winkel's Teaching Entrepreneurship and some national frameworks (e.g, N Macedonia, Wales).
*** go to HEInnovate.eu, search for "EPIC". EntreComp is here.
**** shoutout to QREC at Kyushu that is getting involved. Gabi Kaffka was EPIC's program manager.