Peter Balan

Identifying teaching methods that engage entrepreneurship students

Purpose – Entrepreneurship education particularly requires student engagement because of the complexity of the entrepreneurship process. The purpose of this paper is to describe how an established measure of engagement can be used to identify relevant teaching methods that could be used to engage any group of entrepreneurship students.Design/methodology/approach – The Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE) instrument was used to provide 47 well established engagement criteria. The results from 393 students (33 per cent response rate), and the identification by immersed experts of the criteria that were present in each of six teaching methods, made it possible to calculate a weighted score of engagement contribution for each teaching method.Findings – This method described in this paper identified, for undergraduate entrepreneurship students, the most engaging teaching methods as well as the least engaging. This approach found that from amongst the particular range of teaching methods in the cou...

Preparing Students for Flipped or Team-Based Learning Methods

Purpose – Teaching methods such as Flipped Learning and Team-Based Learning require students to pre-learn course materials before a teaching session, because classroom exercises rely on students using self-gained knowledge. This is the reverse to “traditional” teaching when course materials are presented during a lecture, and students are assessed on that material during another session at a later stage. The purpose of this paper is to describe an introductory class session that prepares and engages students to be successful participants in courses requiring pre-learning. Design/methodology/approach – A sequence of seven learning activities drawn from the education literature was implemented in an introductory undergraduate entrepreneurship class. These activities were evaluated using exploratory qualitative research. Findings – Student evaluations of the learning activities showed that they readily identified important aspects of learning, critical factors related to student success, and the learning pur...

A structured method for innovating in entrepreneurship pedagogies

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe a dynamic and continuous process for evaluating entrepreneurship pedagogies to implement continuous improvement of entrepreneurship education in order to achieve increased student engagement in face-to-face classes. Pedagogy is argued to be a significant contributor to entrepreneurship education programmes, consisting of dynamic activities and initiatives within the scope of defined entrepreneurship education ecosystems. Design/methodology/approach A “minute paper” was used as a quick and convenient method to obtain qualitative data on student perceptions of different pedagogies. The research adopted an action-research strategy where data were analysed using concept mapping to identify key themes that the educator can use to further develop or modify the pedagogy during course delivery. Findings The research identified student perceptions of the nature of engagement with pedagogies, and of possible improvements that were used by the educator to increase student engagement during course delivery. Different pedagogies were found to have varying outcomes on students’ engagement with entrepreneurship learning, and as such, contextual and spatial factors have to be taken into account when implementing new and/or adjusted pedagogies. Research limitations/implications Repeated application of the research method to different pedagogies was carried out in several deliveries of an undergraduate entrepreneurship foundation course in one university. As such, further research requires testing in various institutional and delivery contexts as well as comparisons of learning and other outcomes including entrepreneurial intentions between classes where particular pedagogies may or may not be used. Practical implications The approach described is relatively straightforward to implement, with marginal resource and time. It provides rich data that gives insights into student perceptions of engagement with an individual pedagogy that the educator can use to modify to modify in order to increase student engagement. Originality/value The paper describes a practical method for educators to evaluate and develop optimal pedagogies for a particular class or group of students. This method can be applied to small as well as large class sizes, and data analysis can be carried out in real time to make improvements during course delivery. Although this method is described in the context of entrepreneurship education, it can be applied to other fields of instruction.