Entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity

Jasmin Hinds

Thursday 24 February 2022

Dr Gopinath reflects on how pedagogical research has informed her practice within the Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Creativity Management module (MN5510). Neha’s reflections are informed by teaching through a pandemic.

Overall structure

There could be environmental barriers to learning such as physical space, isolation, peer pressure, family pressure, particularly during Covid where studies are online (Lister et al 2021). So, giving autonomy in choosing their preferred method of communication and engagement is beneficial.

The overall structure of this module is underpinned by the ‘pedagogy of care’ especially in the current circumstances (e.g., regular check-ins) and ‘social justice model’ (Hanesworth et al.,2019). The class activities ensure multiple means of representations, actions and expression and engagement as per UDL guidelines (CAST,2018). The resources used in the class helps embed cultural diversity by bringing in voices from various other perspectives. The overall structure also embraces critical reflection on diversity and inclusion.

Learning Objectives

Importance of Learning Objectives (LO’s)

Sharing the LO’s for each class ensures that the content and activities for the session are clearly communicated to the students. Sharing LO’s:

• Have a positive impact on student wellbeing (Lister et al. 2021).
• Have been associated with increased clarity amongst students (Fulmer, 2017)
• Have been associated with increased student confidence
• Help to minimise the risk of anxiety and ‘brain fog’ amongst students (Ocon, 2013)

In revising the LO’s for my module, I relied upon Hanesworth et al.’s (2019) Social Justice Model, whereby students are involved in the learning process. The new LO’s therefore highlighted the ‘students as partners’, where the emphasis is on co-creation and lateral forms of knowledge creation. Drawing upon the UDL guidance which encourages practitioners to ‘optimize relevance, value and authenticity’ (CAST 2018), the new LO’s also sought to make ensure that ‘real-life’ relevance is embedded within the topic, and evident within the learning objectives.

Approach to conveying the LO’s to students

Heightening the salience of goals and objects is known to improve student engagement (CAST, 2018), help students practice metacognition and become self-regulated learners (Fulmer, 2017), helps reduce ambiguity in the course and helps to manage student anxiety, stress, or brain fog (Lister et al. 2012, Fulmer 2017). Keeping this research in mind, during my modules there is scheduled time at the beginning of each session to go though the LO’s with students, and time reserved at the end of each session to revisit the LO’s to ensure they have been achieved.

Readings

Some students may feel less comfortable participating in class. So allowing students the opportunity to reflect, organise their thoughts and process information before class, could serve to minimise some barriers to student participation. One way to achieve this is through asking students to work on preparatory work in advance of classes. The use of preparatory work is associated with increased student confidence to participate in class-based discussions (Lister at al. 2021).

Access to all the resources one week before class helps students to prepare, improves their self-confidence and self-esteem and encourages positive wellbeing by increased sense of control (Clarke, 2006).

A lack of diversity and adequate representation has been linked to lower rates of wellbeing amongst impacted students (Bird and Pitman, 2020). To diversify the content of the course, and increase diverse representation for all students, I incorporated more wide-ranging authors within the reading list. Revising reading lists, to incorporate further diversity and representation, is one incremental step to decolonising the curriculum.

To build a ‘culturally sustaining pedagogy’, whereby educators also acknowledge voices outside of the global West and give students equal opportunities to critically engage with culturally diverse academic views (Paris, 2012), a book from Professor Jay Mitra and papers from a diverse range of academics have been incorporated into the module. This included the viewpoints and case studies from not just the West, but also the other parts of the world where entrepreneurship plays a key role.

“The book enables us to critically re-think our understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation by proposing diverse evidence-based perspectives of the phenomena. This book integrates non-western perspectives with received wisdom and prompts us to actively consider the embedding into curricula of contextualised and thematic marginalised or suppressed knowledge”.

Professor Jay Mitra, Essex Business School.

Technology and Platforms

To help encourage enhanced social skills and participation, during each class students are offered the choice of various means of participating, including the MS Teams chat function or Padlet.

Padlet acts as a ‘safe place’ for students to anonymously post their questions. I facilitate the use of Padlet on my module through providing students with a Padlet training video, signposting students to the IT helpdesk for any technical support and giving them time to experiment with this technology, to minimise the risk of any associated fear or anxiety in class.

Learning activities

In this module, all the sessions were planned in a manner that encourages more autonomy, freedom of choice and control over the environment, increased autonomy is achieved through providing students with various options to engage and participate in the class (Ryan and Deci, 2000).

Strategies employed include:

• Breaking down the class plan into stages and actively involving students in the class activities.
• Using smaller tasks to help students manage their learning and simplify mental processing of activities, to minimise the risk of brain fog.
• Using a ‘project-based learning’ approach to class activities, whereby students are given smaller tasks to research, and feedback outcomes to the wider group
• Students are offered the choice to work in pairs or individually to help mitigate social anxiety
• Activities have real-world relevance and give the learners a choice to bring examples of their choice. This ensures that learners are able to represent their own perspectives and identities.
• Embedding student choice and autonomy alongside critical pedagogy, across the module, contributes to students being able to critically reflect on the subject matter in a way that resonates with them. This strategy also encourages more lateral forms of knowledge creation, as it helps the educator also learn from the students.

Assessments

In this module, all assessments were aligned to LOs, and we discussed the rubric in class to clarify expectations of the assessment in the first class. This empowered the students, improved their self-confidence and wellbeing (CAST,2018; Lister et al, 2021) as they knew what was expected of them and could plan effectively.

Written assessments can pose difficulties for learners, especially students who are experiencing brain fog, who may find it challenging to express themselves in writing. Thus, in this module we gradually built on the assessments giving students an opportunity to present their draft ideas by using a creative output of their choice. I provide 1-2-1 feedback and discuss each draft with the students to encourage a ‘growth mindset’ which puts the educator in a facilitative position, understanding where the learner currently is, supporting their growth and development, rather than judging their performance and ability retrospectively. Constructive, timely and specific feedback helps to improve students’ final submission (UDL 8.4, CAST 2018). Improvement in the students’ final submission grade was evident on this module, utilising this approach.

Want to find out more?

Bird, K. S., & Pitman, L. (2020). How diverse is your reading list? Exploring issues of representation and decolonisation in the UK. Higher Education, 79(5), 903-920.

CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org Accessed on 07/02/22

Clarke, A. T. (2006). Coping with interpersonal stress and psychosocial health among children and adolescents: A meta-analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 35(1), 10-23.

Fulmer, S, 2017 GUEST POST: Should I share my learning outcomes with students? Available at: https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2017/10/4-1 Accessed on: 06/06/21.

Hanesworth, P., Bracken, S., & Elkington, S. (2019). A typology for a social justice approach to assessment: learning from universal design and culturally sustaining pedagogy. Teaching in Higher Education, 24(1), 98-114.

Lister, K., Seale, J. and Douce, C., 2021. Mental health in distance learning: a taxonomy of barriers and enablers to student mental wellbeing. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, pp.1-15.

Morris, S. (2020) Fostering Care and Community at a Distance, Sean Michael Morris. 28 May. Available at https://www.seanmichaelmorris.com/fostering-care-and-community-at-a-distance/ Accessed on: 06/06/2021

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American psychologist, 55(1), 68.