Re-imagining an Entrepreneurship curriculum
How a reflection upon two-year experience teaching Entrepreneurship and Core Business in our transdisciplinary programme led to some re-design of the business curriculum to incorporate more “entrepreneurial mindset” and “change management” features.
Yay! We are almost at the end of this ‘pandemic’, remote-based academic year. As usual, the end of the semester is hectic — deadlines popping up, students looking for further advice, the ambitious coursework managed with our corporate partners coming to an end… plus, hundreds of exams are getting ready to be checked.
Luckily, active life is the best way to navigate the daunting times of the pandemic… especially learning and reflecting on courses, curriculum, and adjustments that can be brought into our our teaching. At the end of the day, the next semester is just around the corner!
In March and April 2021, I was fortunate to participate, on behalf of our School, in a course and community of practice by Babson College (with the participation of some professors from Stanford University as well), ELI Asia. This programme focused on the foundations of Babson’s paramount “Entrepreneurship Thought and Action” and how to develop leadership skills in the higher education industry, for the ultimate goal to transform our students in the age of disruptions.
Throughout this course, thanks to thought-provoking inputs by a multitude of inspiring professors (including Prof. Charles “Chuck” Eesley, whom I am sure many in our ITS community are familiar with), I directed my energies to re-design some parts of my Entrepreneurship and Core Business curriculum in our transdisciplinary undergraduate programme.
You can find a brief introduction upon the six business courses in Entrepreneurship and Core Business curriculum in the slide below (as well as a snapshot of our corporate partners, which we have been doing a lot of exciting stuff with… but this is material for the next post!).
What I have been reflecting on for almost an year was — how can I incorporate more “action-learning” and “change management” content into my curriculum (without overlapping with other subjects of our programme)? How can I foster more entrepreneurial behaviour and mindset at undergraduate level? And, what expectations should I set for my courses and my students?
All of this whilst I need to strike a balance between academic content and knowledge and project-based learning… after all, in a transdisciplinary curriculum, the usual content of a BBA degree has been condensed into only- six-but-very-intensive subjects.
By talking to and consulting with professors from Babson College and Stanford University in my very same field of teaching and research, I learnt from their decades of experiences in Entrepreneurship teaching. Interestingly, when Babson College first introduced its signature course “FME — Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship” over twenty years ago, their main focus was on these two components of enterprise building, business and technology. Which is pretty much what we too instruct and nurture at our School.
However, with further re-designs of their curriculum, Babson professors added more leadership and organizational behaviour features, up to now, when they pivoted even further towards the leadership dimension of entrepreneurship as the the vital and crucial springboard of the whole business curriculum.
Thus, the north star of my curriculum re-design was exactly this — adding, reshaping, incorporating more leadership (especially the newest concept of resonant leadership) and change management into my subjects.
In the excerpt below, you can find some more granular insights over my assignment.
I also realised that throughout the curricular subjects there is little or no time to cultivate those essential skills and reflections which allow the development of leadership. Hence, I added some supplementary workshops for the upcoming summer semester, to be conducted in a more relaxed environment, with a limited number of students, and aiming at equipping learners with those professional development skills that can pave the way for a real change of paradigm and ultimately an authentic transformation… a transformation of people to reach and deliver the much sought-after digital transformation of Thai industries!
