Exploring Enterprise:exploiting Enquiry-Based Learning to enhance

enterprise education

May 2009

Karen O’RourkeAcademic Developer and Teacher Fellow

Centre for Excellence in Teaching and LearningLeeds Metropolitan University, UK

k.orourke@leedsmet.ac.uk

I have no special talents, I am only passionately

curious

Me too!

• Problem-Based Learning research, development and implementation in English Literature with UK National Teaching Fellow

• Set up and managed the first Pedagogic Research Centre in the Faculty of Arts, The Victoria University of Manchester

• Managed an externally-funded EBL staff development project delivered across six UK HE institutions

• Key member of Manchester team developing successful bid for Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning - £4.5M

- case studies and publications

- student intern programmes and National Student Network

- keynotes ,workshops and consultancies across the UK and in Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, USA, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Australia, Finland....

• Current area of interest is the link between enquiry-based learning and the development of students’ entrepreneurial and intra-preneurial skills, behaviours and attitudes

•

www.leedsmet.ac.uk/enterprise

During this workshop, you will:• Engage in an EBL activity (or two....or three!)

• Have opportunities to – Review some key EBL principles and processes

– Discuss some of the benefits of EBL

– Examine the applicability of EBL as a method to develop

entrepreneurial graduates

– Identify some opportunities and challenges in relation to enterprise education

Our group contract

•We will work collaboratively and co-operatively

•Everyone should be encouraged to make a contribution

•Tasks should be completed by the designated deadline

•We will relax and enjoy ourselves!

•Any more….?

Your handouts

Find others in the room with the same colour paper clip as yours

As a group, you have three minutes from the word ‘go’ to come up with as many uses for a paper clip as you can think of

Hints -someone should note your ideas – this is a competition! – so you will need a record

- use your imagination!

Institute for Enterprise

My journey to Cheltenham....

walking

elevator

train

TAXI

TUBE

escalator

on separate post it notes, write down all the modes of transport you used to get to this workshop today, e.g.

Train walk

cycle

bus

Hang on to those post-its!

Exploring ways to work together....• Conduct a team investigation

– Pens– flipchart

• Share information and use it to create an escutcheon that illustrates your team’s– Skills– Interests– Talents– Diversity– USP

You have ten minutes to complete the escutcheon followed by two minutes ‘elevator pitch’ for each team

Any questions?

Assessment, Learning and Teaching Priorities 2008-12

‘Leeds Met puts students at the heart of everything we do, enabling them to maximise their potential and use all their talents to the full’

Helping students to engage in learning in exciting, flexible, stimulating environments where creativity and individuality of approach are encouraged

Offering an engaging, transformative and rounded experience for our students e.g....through working with industry and our partners

Broadening student perspectives to enable them to develop skills for learning, information literacy and enterprise

At Leeds Metropolitan University, enterprise education is recognised as “an inclusive concept which provides both the context in which subject disciplines can be explored as well as an approach to learning which can be taken to the exploration and discovery of a discipline. In this respect, it can provide a challenging environment within which to explore a variety of teaching areas (such as a small business context) as well as providing a new and stimulating dimension to learning – that of being enterprising”.

At Leeds Metropolitan University, enterprise education is recognised as “an inclusive concept which provides both the context in which subject disciplines can be explored as well as an approach to learning which can be taken to the exploration and discovery of a discipline. In this respect, it can provide a challenging environment within which to explore a variety of teaching areas (such as a small business context) as well as providing a new and stimulating dimension to learning – that of being enterprising”.

The CETL – Enterprise in the Curriculum

Supporting the development of a positive attitude to innovation, personal change and development

Development, integration and embedding across all subject areas and levels – beyond discrete activities and ‘bolt-on’ models

Underpinned by theory and grounded in practice

Subject knowledge and skills development

Engagement with with experts and professionals, developing relationships and forming partnerships

Experiential learning approach – active, student-centred, reflective

The cure for boredom is curiosity.

There is no cure for curiosity....

Dorothy Parker

Amalgamate your post-its and discard duplicates. Now think of as many OTHER ways you could have got here and write your ideas down on separate post-it notes

HINT – break the boundaries and be imaginative!

Formula One racing car

On the back of an elephant

swimming

Be mindful of the ground rules....

We’re nearly there!

Organise your post-it notes according to common characteristics or themes

Identify opposites (e.g. fast/slow or fun/boring) and re-sort if necessary

Take any two opposing themes and use them to complete a Boston Box

Boston Box – an example

Fast S

low

Expensive Affordable

Review/Reflect

• How did your group approach the task?

• Who or what helped you?

• What hindered you?

• What resources did you need and find?

• What could you have done differently?

Developing intellectual skills

Evaluation

Synthesis

Analysis

Application

Comprehension

Knowledge

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Knowledge – repeat, record, recall, list, relate

Comprehension – restate, discuss, explain, identify, tell

Application – interpret, apply, use, illustrate, demonstrate

Analysis – compare, contrast, question, debate, categorise

Synthesis – arrange, assemble, construct, create, organise

Evaluation – rate, compare, revise, judge, appraise

Evaluation

Synthesis

Analysis

Application

Comprehension

Knowledge

HypothesisCreativity and Innovation

InstinctIntuition

‘safe’ environment

Challenging landscape

new territory to explore

Based on Beard, C. Sheffield Hallam University

Getting down to it

• You are an interdisciplinary team working in Local Government, Town Planning department. You have been asked to develop a transport strategy for getting the public from London to the University of Sussex. You have 3 weeks to produce an outline strategy.

• What’s your action plan? (15 minutes)

• Present your initial action plan to colleagues (3 minutes)

• Feedback to refine your ideas (5 minutes)

NCGE and NESTA Report September 2008‘Developing Entrepreneurial Graduates’

The executive summary:• More UK students need to engage in entrepreneurial

activity• Vice-Chancellors should provide visible leadership• Academics are the enablers of change in the curriculum• Entrepreneurship education can enrich students’

university experience• Business and social entrepreneurs must be fully involved• Students should seize opportunities that enterprise

education offers to enable them to prepare for their futures

Developing Entrepreneurial Graduates

• Engaging stakeholders- academic faculty

- student clubs and societies

- entrepreneurs and businesses

- social entrepreneurs

• Enabling environments- capacity building

- cross-campus reach

- visible leadership

- institutional culture

- embeddedness

• Entrepreneurial Practices- multidisciplinary

- innovative educators

- experiential approaches

- experimentation and discovery

What is EBL?

A natural form of learning, borne out of our innate sense of curiosity and desire to investigate and understand

It is widely applicable, and has grown across a number of subjects and covers a broad spectrum of approaches and learning activities

A definition....

EBL represents a shift away from passive methods, which involve the transmission of knowledge to students, to more facilitative teaching methods through which students are expected to construct their own knowledge and understanding by engaging in supported processes of enquiry Kahn and O’Rourke, Guide to Enquiry-Based

Learning, www.heacademy.ac.uk

EBL provides two broad models of learning through enquiry:

a) Engagement with problems that present difficulties but are capable of solution when subject to appropriate enquiry

b) Engagement with problems whose outcomes are inherently uncertain, open to question, unsettled, and thus a matter for continuing, perhaps irresolvable, enquiry

CEEBL, 2006

Pursuing (information-active)Students explore a knowledge-base by pursuingtheir own closed questions and lines of enquiry (“what isthe existing answer to my question?”)

Authoring (discovery-active)Students pursue their own open-ended questions andlines of enquiry in interaction with the knowledge-baseof the discipline (“how can I answer my question”)

Identifying (information-responsive)Students explore the knowledge-base of the disciplinein response to closed questions or lines of enquiry framed by staff (“what is the existing answer to this question?”)

Producing (discovery-responsive)Students pursue open questions or lines of inquiry framed by tutors, in interaction with the knowledge-base of the discipline (“how can I answer this question?”)

EXPLORING AND ACQUIRING EXISTING KNOWLEDGE

PARTICIPATING IN BUILDING KNOWLEDGE

STUDENT LED

STAFF LED LEVY (2009), CILASS

Active, student-centred, authentic, supported• Learning driven by a process of enquiry or investigation

• Starting point - complex, intriguing, ‘real world’ stimulus

• Student-centred

• Requires action

• Connects theory and practice

• Values process and product

• Develops skills

• Social

• Enjoyable

• Transition – Practice in a safe environment– Opportunities for reflection and review– Accommodates different learning styles– Socialises the learning and the learner

• Integration – knowledge, social, cultural

• Lifelong learning – information explosion

• Inter-professional and interdisciplinary approaches

• Links teaching, learning and research

• Employability/professional body requirements

• Develops entrepreneurial mindset

Why introduce EBL?

‘….leaving behind the dusty lecture halls, to find out about our subject….done through interaction with other students and academics, and evidence found in places – books, the internet, and the big wide world itself’

Group Task

Background: a group of academic staff have decided to make the university’s stance on enterprise education explicit to the first-year intake. They have asked your team to design a poster that explains (sells?) enterprise to the students. The poster will be displayed in the student common-room during the first three weeks of term.

Task: design an outline poster (a draft)– Present your ideas to a panel of students (3 minutes

maximum)

Enterprise skills are defined as:• Creation of new ideas, innovation• Recognising strengths (individual and collective)• Effective communication• Undertaking research (demand, competitors, trends etc)• Networking• Leadership, managing others• Seizing opportunities and managing risk• Project management• Organisation and planning• Successful negotiation........persuasion• Societal responsibility, ‘making a difference’

Familiar?....EBL?

Motivation• Authentic• Realistic challenge• Positive attitude towards discipline - passion• Supportive• Detailed, timely feedback • Shared learning

– Successes– Mistakes and risks

• Social learning• Builds confidence

Personal (Iife) skills

• Taking and accepting responsibility - autonomy• Ethics, empathy, tolerance, honesty• Reliability• Creative problem-solving• Balancing creativity with resilience• Balancing work with life• Adaptability• Entrpreneurial mindset

Employability

• Team working/building and leadership• Inter-personal skills

– Negotiation– Decision making– Handling conflict– Sharing

• Communication skills– Presentation, explaining, questioning – Networking

• Managing projects and meetings• Evaluation, judgement, appraisal• Entrepreneurship, ‘intrapreneurship’ and

social enterprise

attitudes are also important to employers….

Interested, enthusiastic and flexible graduate….and….keen, motivated and ambitious

individuals….

are frequently encountered phrases and the words

dedicated passionate self-starter energetic

systematic committed

BioSciences Subject Centre Newsletter2007 www.heacademy.ac.uk

The centre of the teaching and learning process must become the student. In the words of Heidegger, “the teacher is ahead of his apprentices in this alone, that he has still far more to learn than they....he has to learn to let them learn”.

(Prof Lewis Elton, THES, 21 July 2000)

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire

W B Yeats

Research

I originally thought research was a big thing to do, it required lots of people and money. I thought it was scientists and stuff. I know it’s not now. I know I can do it. It’s about being critical, looking at what other people have done, then finding a methodology and asking questions.

First Year Student, Early Childhood Studies, Northumbria University, UK

Research

I soon learned that it did not require a great brain to do original research. One must be highly motivated, exercise good judgement, have intelligence, imagination, determination and a little luck. One of the most important qualities in doing research, I found, was to ask the right questions at the right time.

Julius Axelrod (Nobel prize winning scientist)

• You go out of a PBL with your head buzzing, rather than feeling you’ve just passively sat there

• The discussions....it’s amazing! Hearing all the different viewpoints....seeing how things develop

• When you see someone else is on the same track and you’re all learning the same thing, that can give you a big confidence boost, it pushes you a bit more because you want your work to be just as good as theirs

• You have responsibility to the whole group, not just yourself, everyone has to pull together

I have developed my skills, it has given me confidence to put my ideas forward I am more confident working

with people Who I am not familiar with and I found out I’m more creative than I thought!

This has given me experience and confidence to take into my final year at university and my professional life. This module has had a huge impact on me

I feel more confident in my own ideas and having the ability to lead a group and create a concept that others buy into

Students talking about enterprise education

My current area of EBL activity‘Transforming Enterprise Education’

Supporting the development of a positive attitude to innovation, personal growth and professional development

Development, integration and embedding across all subject areas and levels – beyond discrete activities and ‘bolt-on’ models

Engagement with experts and professionals, developing relationships and forming partnerships

Enquiry-based learning approach – active, student-centred, reflective

The Institute for Enterprise – a familiar approach....?

Core Team of ‘experts’

Enterprise Pioneers – specific areas of expertise

Small-scale teaching and learning projects

Entrepreneur in Residence

Engagement with external partners

CETL alliance

Student Pioneers and interns

A FAVOURABLE CLIMATE – the ‘enterprising university’ - but there are risks and challenges

An Enquiry-Based Approach to Enterprise

Collaborative, co-operative learning environment

Experiential

Challenging - uses real-life scenarios and problems

Investigative - stimulates deep exploration of the subject

Multi-disciplinary as well as subject-specific

Facilitated - guided by experts and supported by peer group

Utilises existing knowledge and develops new knowledge

Develops a range of skills, attitudes, values

Developing and embedding enterprise in the curriculum....

Working as individuals and in teams, developing networks and communities

Recognising individual and collective talents, capabilities, strengths, limitations

Excitement of discovery, generating new ideas , passion, creativity

Understanding business and organisational processes

Opportunities to develop, practice and apply skills

Reward and recognition for hard work

Celebrating successes and learning from failure, developing resilience and self-reliance

Facilitation, inspiration, competition

CONFIDENCE to take the key, unlock potential

Enterprise….it’s what we do every day!

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has

its own reason for existing.

Albert Einstein

Using student reflections in response:

Encourages us to ask questions that we both know we want the answers to....

....stimulates the innate curiosity to compare home cultures and diversity between methods of daily living to opposing world views on current affairs....

As a group, the understanding becomes clear....

Each person brings to the table a different world view, and different world knowledge, thus compelling explorations of unfamiliar cultures....

‘….leaving behind the dusty lecture halls, to find out about our subject….done through interaction with other students and academics, and evidence found in places – books, the internet, and the big wide world itself’

‘The world is but a school of inquiry’

(Michel de Montaigne)

Exploring a new learning landscape….volunteering in Peru 2009

My home for six weeks in September-October 2009

Zapallal shanty town, near Lima, Peru

k.orourke@leedsmet.ac.uk

Centre for Excellence in Teaching and LearningLeeds Metropolitan University, UK

Publications, case-studies and resourceswww.leedsmet.ac.uk/enterprisewww.manchester.ac.uk/ceebl

May 2009