The Hindu Business Line : Teaching the teachers

A little over a year ago, the National Entrepreneurship Network launched a course to teach Indian teachers how to teach entrepreneurship. Now, the first group of 20 teachers from colleges across the country are all set to graduate from the Entrepreneurship Educators’ Course.

Strong faculty are the lynchpin of NEN’s success and also for changing the face of entrepreneurship in India, says Laura Parkin, Executive Director, National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), which is a not-for-profit initiative of the Wadhwani Foundation. However, “high growth entrepreneurship is a new discipline in India; where do the faculty members learn the subject,” she points out.

It was to address this knowledge gap that NEN developed and launched the Entrepreneurship Educators Course, she adds.

Designed by NEN, in association with Stanford University’s Stanford Technology Ventures Program and the N.S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at IIM-Bangalore, the five-module Entrepreneurship Educators Course involves 11 days of classroom learning spread over a year. While three modules are held in IIM-Bangalore, two are held in multiple locations across India. The curriculum includes basic entrepreneurship concepts, simulations and experiential learning methods. Faculty for the programme are drawn from around the world including Stanford University, IIM-Bangalore, Columbia University and London Business School, while participants currently come from academic institutions that are members of NEN.

Course contents

Concepts and skills taught during the course include idea generation, opportunity evaluation, business planning, raising and leveraging resources and strategies to help a young business grow. Other skills taught during the course include negotiation, sales and observation. The course also teaches the teachers how best to help students learn entrepreneurship concepts and to develop their skills.

Given the nature of entrepreneurship, the course is taught through methods that emphasise participant-centred, experiential learning, Parkin explains. Participants in the Entrepreneurship Educators Course are introduced to teaching methods that help students practise entrepreneurship inside and outside the classroom. The emphasis here is on games, projects, cases and so on. The course, in fact, plays a vital role in introducing Indian teachers to both the discipline of entrepreneurship and new teaching methods, she adds.

Participants acknowledge the perspective that the course offers. According to Vasanti Venugopal, a Professor at Mount Carmel College, Bangalore, who is part of the first batch of the course, “The Entrepreneurship Educators Course has helped in bringing about a shift in the emphasis from educating ‘about’ entrepreneurship to educating ‘for’ it.” The course also created a platform for the participating teachers to exchange ideas and learn from one another’s experiences, she adds.

Similarly, Narendra Joshi an Assistant Professor at Fr. C. Rodrigues College of Engineering, Mumbai, says the course has made him a better teacher in entrepreneurship as it provides a lot of resource material and honed teaching skills. The programme’s pedagogy and the opportunity to share experiences and practices with other participants added to its usefulness, he points out.

Radha Iyer, Senior Lecturer, K. J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, points out that the programme brought a blend of various learning methodologies to classroom sessions. Participants in the course were expected to apply concepts while setting up entrepreneurship cells in the colleges they taught in, she adds.

This focus on applying concepts is, in fact, an integral aspect of the course’s design. The one-year duration of the course makes it possible for participants to test and share new content, teaching methods and exercises. “After each module, participants implement what they have learned on their own campuses,” says Parkin.

Certification

In fact, the certification process requires participants in the Entrepreneurship Educator Course to demonstrate a specified level of ‘entrepreneurship programme activity’ on their respective college campuses, she explains. So, in addition to completing all five modules of the course, participants who receive a certificate “need to have obtained a predetermined level of activity points along with a minimum required number of actively engaged students on campus,” she adds. And participants who want to graduate with an ‘honours’ certification need to show immense initiative and drive in leading the programme and also in developing teaching material such as case studies, exercises, and so on.

Parkin believes that graduates of the Entrepreneurship Educators Course will design, develop and launch world-class entrepreneurship programmes on their campuses. “They lead multiple activities, recruit additional faculty, build interest among the students, and help the students build their skills in entrepreneurship… Most importantly, they are fostering the spirit of entrepreneurship among the youth,” she declares.

The first batch of NEN’s home-grown entrepreneurship educators are already doing much of what is expected of them. Venugopal, for instance, says that the e-cell at Mount Carmel College Bangalore does a whole range of entrepreneurship development programmes including quizzes, games, internships, and so on. The college’s e-cell plans to start a mock company on campus, she adds.

Similarly, Joshi explains that the e-cell in Fr. C. Rodrigues College of Engineering does a number of activities through the year. The college also has an entrepreneurship elective at the post-graduate level and has several other courses in entrepreneurship.

Parkin believes that NEN’s Entrepreneurship Educators Course is the largest entrepreneurship faculty development course in the world. Plans for the course include the addition of advanced electives on subjects such as funding and incubation and an effort to maintain and improve the programme’s standards, she declares.