Discussion: View Thread

  • 1.  How can university leaders, instructors, students, and external stakeholders improve ENT education?

    Posted 01-17-2023 10:40

    Dear ENT Colleagues,

    We've all heard concerns that many students are not getting the entrepreneurial skills they need. What should university leaders (e.g., deans, dept. chairs), instructors, students, and external stakeholders (e.g., potential employers) do about this? We would like to open up the conversation on these issues and do so in our open-access Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy article titled Using extreme pedagogy to enhance entrepreneurship education. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25151274221144218)

    For example, we offer the following suggestions for university leaders:

    1. Establish university mission and policies to engender a collective intention by all entrepreneurship education (EE) stakeholders to co-create EE graduates with relevant skills.
    2. Prioritize collective ownership including deans and other administrators, instructors, students, and staff over entrepreneurship education.
    3. Allow collaborative access by all EE stakeholders to continuously examine and improve EE learning activities.
    4. Provide resources (e.g., technology, training, and development opportunities) to implement extreme pedagogy effectively.

    And, we offer the following suggestions for instructors:

    1. Prioritize curriculum connected to skill development for entrepreneurial value.
    2. Focus teaching around value co-creation with collaborative input and support from other stakeholders (e.g., potential employers from different industries).
    3. Curate learning environments so the majority of experiences are relevant to skill development and entrepreneurial value.
    4. Focus classroom management and metrics (e.g., grading criteria, assignments) on the development and reinforcement of behaviors and actions important for skill development (e.g., design thinking, critical thinking, problem-based ownership).

    We look forward to reactions from members of ENT!

    Best wishes for a spectacular 2023!

     --Herman.



    ------------------------------
    Herman Aguinis, Ph.D.
    Immediate Past President, Academy of Management
    Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar & Professor of Management
    The George Washington University School of Business
    Washington, DC
    http://hermanaguinis.com/
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: How can university leaders, instructors, students, and external stakeholders improve ENT education?

    Posted 01-19-2023 11:19
    Herman - thanks for raising this! So how do we get started effectively?
    We cannot do what you suggest without two vital prerequisites: <TL;DR version>
         1) rigorous training in education theory & practice and
         2) rigorous assessment of educational impact (which requires #1)

    Good news: it is definitely time to talk about this. Let's talk - Herman, I'll round up the right people and get this going. 
    Better news: A+ people are already working at both! If interested, email me directly. (The Europeans/UK are way ahead of us; I'd love to hear my friends over there chime in on all this.)  Want more? Read on! :) 
    <non-TL;DR>

    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. 





    Norris

    "How can I help you to grow entrepreneurs?" 
    Norris Krueger, Ph.D.
         208.440.3747
    Want to know what I'm up to? My last 12 months!








  • 3.  RE: How can university leaders, instructors, students, and external stakeholders improve ENT education?

    Posted 01-19-2023 11:20
    Dear Colleagues,

    Apologies for cross posting.

    The submission deadline for the Eastern Academy of Management Annual Meeting is approaching soon (January 23). Our conference theme this year is "Towards justice and equity in an unequal world".

    This year, we will be celebrating EAM's 60th annual conference, and in Philadelphia!

    Please find here the call for submissions: 

    We greatly look forward to receiving your contributions!

    Best,
    Dev Dutta.

    Sent from my iPhone