1 / 17

Enhancing Entrepreneurship Education: Longitudinal Survey Insights from University Students

This paper explores the challenges and benefits of entrepreneurship education at university level, focusing on an innovative module's design and practical implementation. It presents findings from a longitudinal survey measuring entrepreneurial attitudes, aiming to enhance students' entrepreneurial skills and mindsets.

chensley
Download Presentation

Enhancing Entrepreneurship Education: Longitudinal Survey Insights from University Students

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The challenges of entrepreneurship education at university: Evidence from a longitudinal surveyChaoyang University of Technology Professor D.J. Visser, Ph.D. Professor of Management School of Business and Finance University of the Western Cape Bellville South Africa

  2. Introduction • Entrepreneurship education at university • Lack of employment opportunities • Introduction of course at 2nd year level Purpose of this paper • Design of an innovative module • Practical implementation • Assessing efficacy by means of longitudinal survey

  3. Literature review on entrepreneurship education • Laukannen (2000) • Education about entrepreneurship • Education for entrepreneurship • Mason (2000) • Developing cores skills & attributes • Literature supports: • Entrepreneurship can be taught (Timmons & Spinelli, 2004) • Education can enhance entrepreneurial skills, competencies, attitudes (Davies, 2001)

  4. Hytti’s Model of Entrepreneurship Education • Learn to understand entrepreneurship • Learn to become more entrepreneurial • Learn to become an entrepreneur • What do entrepreneurs do? • What is entrepreneurship? • Why are entrepreneurs needed? • How many entrepreneurs do we have? • I need to take responsibility of my learning, career and life • How do I take responsibility? • Can I become an entrepreneur? • How to become an entrepreneur? • How to manage the business?

  5. Measuring entrepreneurship at tertiary level • Entrepreneurial Attitude Orientation scale (validated by Robinson, Stimpson, Huefner & Hunt, 1991) • Specifically designed to measure “attitude” • Successfully discriminates between entrepreneurs & non-entrepreneurs • EAO subscales: • Achievement in Business (ACH) • Innovation in Business (INN) • Personal Control (PC) • Self-esteem (SE) • All 4 subscales validated for South Africa (Van Wyk, Boshoff and Owen, 1999)

  6. Hypotheses • H1: Achievement orientation improves after having attended the training module • H2: Personal control improves after having attended the training module • H3: Innovation improves after having attended the training module • H4: Self-esteem improves after having attended the training module

  7. Academic programme for entrepreneurship at second year level • Term 1: Starting a business (Theory) • Entrepreneurship as a career choice, theory on starting and running an enterprise • Term 2: Starting a business (Practice) • Group involvement, forming micro-enterprise teams • Term 3: Operating the small business (Practice) • Running enterprises, experiencing success factors • Term 4: Harvesting the enterprise (Practice) • Group dynamics, conflict resolution

  8. Assessment methods • Weekly journals • Student peer evaluation • Interview/interaction with entrepreneurs • Group business plan • Action training • Group enterprise progress reports • Case studies • Term tests • Final group report • Examination

  9. Research method: Longitudinal survey • Design of study • T1: Pre-test • T2: Post-test • Experimental group and Control group subjected to same tests

  10. Confirming the hypotheses (1) • H1: Achievement orientation improves after having attended the training module. • The training had a significant positive effect on Achievement. The trained students showed a significantly higher score in the post training measure than the control group • H2: Personal control improves after having attended the training module. • Hypothesis 2 could not be confirmed. Students with a high score of external control believe that the situation is mainly determined by external forces.

  11. Confirming the hypotheses (2) • H3: Innovation improves after having attended the training module • The results show that students increased their innovation score significantly between T1 and T2 as well as in comparison to a control group • H4: Self-esteem improves after having attended the training module. • At the end of the academic year the self-esteem of the training group was significantly higher than that of the control group.

  12. Conclusions • Changing the mindsets of students by offering self-employment (i.e. entrepreneurship) as a viable alternative to becoming a job-seeker; • Presenting students with the necessary business skills to start and run an enterprise; • Facilitating and further enhancing experiential learning by running and managing their own enterprises on campus; • Subjecting students to real-life examples of the typical problems, needs and constraints entrepreneurs face; and, • Developing role models based on the successful examples of similar student enterprises from previous years.

  13. Recommendations • Future training: “hands-on” • Length of training courses • Longer training time period impacts positively on the outcome • Replication at other tertiary institutions

More Related