EduPreneur task #1 Core elements of educating entrepreneurial mindset

There are numerous measures taken to cut down unemployment. One of them is promoting entrepreneurship through education on many levels in schools, institutes, polytechnics, universities, adn adult training institutes. EU has this integrated entrepreneurship with the European Ministries of Education into the Educational Curriculum (Finnish Ministry of Education: Guidelines for Entrepreneur Education, 2009) to be applied in schools and vocational institutes, but also other organizations have set up projects and programs to advocate entrepreneurship. Teachers play a key role in advocating entrepreneurship and teaching its basic elements.

This blog post is a summary of the core elements of educating an entrepreneurial mindset, as presented in the European Training Foundation (ETF) conference on Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial learning, held in Brussels in November 2012. During the conference, 12 different projects were presented from countries all around the world.

Certain projects, such as Hatchupsut Women's business development centre and incubator for capacity building in Egypt, Incubation for women entrepreneurs in France and in entrepreneurship by storytelling in Sweden are aimed at women's employment through entrepreneurship. The goal of vocational education is to train young people for employment, so these ideas could be taken to school.  The women are in a very different positions in these countries. In Egypt most women stay at home, taking care of the household and family and are rarely seen outside, and hardly ever as workers. The project aims to provide earning opportunities especially for lower- and middle class women, so the female teachers are in key position of changing the thinking that only men should work. However, this is a long process. The core success factors in this project in Egypt is the holistic nature, taking into consideration a broad spectrum of conditions, and international partnership. Egypt is a poor country and cannot facilitate costly projects without outside assistance, especially after the past years' events. In Sweden, the core elements of the entrepreneurship rely on volunteer base for operation, allowing low costs, wide international application, as well as pioneering pedagogic approach. Vocational institutes could provide information about the third sector, and the volunteer and paid positions needed. A lot of experts and skilled workers are needed, for example in development projects, such as drilling wells, in environmental field and in village development (nurses etc.) In all these three countries, partnership was crucial, so that may parties are included from private and public sector, several local organizations in the community and making the project widely known. InnoOmnia is a great example of how this factor has been used successfully.

In several projects, such as Increasing self-employment and empowerment in Tajikistan and Practical Market Reseach in Serbia, one of the key factors was training. In has to be provided on-site, so that it will be accessible for attendees. Training may be provided virtually or with other ICT tools. This can be directly implemented into teaching and education, if IT tools can be provided.

In InnoOmnia Espoo, which is very familiar for all of us, one of the key success factors towards entrepreneurship was the inclusion and bringing together an entrepreneurial community, also mentioned in the France project for women, meaning that the students, teachers, and entrepreneurs all collaborate, exchange ideas and thoughts and work together. When help is near and you can just pull an entrepreneur from the sleeve, it is much easier to approach the expert compared to when, for example, you need to make a phone call or set up an appointment to find out answers.

Several projects have multiplied and spread to several countries, (e.g. Swedish storytelling project has spread to 20 other EU countries) which is another core factor so that others may learn and adopt ideas and practices that have proven to work. The result is networking, which is another important factor in entrepreneurship, and which can be implemented in a vocational school like InnoOmnia as done with Lunch Beats and through the learning community.

Recognition is another core factor. This means that several stakeholders and key parties acknowledge the value of the project and efforts. This is linked with partnership: when you find suitable partners and establish a good cooperation, they will spread the word, and further, this helps with multiplication, so these factors are interconnected. This is more difficult to teach in schools, but the key here is teaching the students to network and maintain relationships where ever they go, introducing themselves as future specialists in their own field of expertise. Teachers can be a great example with this. Personally I have learned to do this in adult education. We had practice "cocktail parties" with other students, where we introduced ourselves with a pre-written, 2-minute "cocktail speech" about who we are, what is our expertise and specialty, where I am especially good at, and what I love to do.

EduPreneur homework #2 School Interview

I interviewed Ms. Sanna Perkiömäki about the entrepreneurship programs they are currently running at Savonia polytechnic, university of applied sciences, and Sakky adult education institute in Kuopio and the North Savo region. Sanna works in the unit of natural resources and environment in Muuruvesi and I was referred to her by two Savonia/Sakky teachers as an expert in entrepreneurship issues.

There are several different ongoing programs for the youth and adults alike as aspiring entrepreneurs. The first nation-wide program and a learning environment run by the school is called Young Entrepreneurship (Nuori Yrittjäjyys ry.). The web site, which can be accessed from the link above, has a comprehensive amount of data of the program. The idea of the program is to create a practice company for one year in order to learn working life skills, entrepreneurial practices and mindset. It is available for young and adults alike. The students will build a team and write up a business plan. Then they write a Cooperation Contract, launch the company, and open the bank account. There are several competitions where the 1-year student entrepreneurs can participate, such as The Best Business Idea and Inno High School Idea Contest. The the entrepreneur write up a Interim and Annual Reports and finish the project by closing the company down. Finally, he considers whether he would like to continue in business. The scope of this program is 10 credit units.

There are also other optional and obligatory units of entrepreneurship, each 10 credits. Students can write their business plans and consider financing and profitability. The students can take either professional skills demonstration exams or attend an examination event.

Another option is a business incubation course worth 10-20 credits. There is support, guidance, and supervision provided by entrepreneurs as "godparents", or sponsors without financial obligations.

For those seeking for a light version of familiarizing with entrepreneurship, a course of 2 ects is provided. On this course the attendees get to know with what entrepreneurship is all about, and they consider the idea and the essence of internal entrepreneurship. One can also complete up to 40 credits of entrepreneurship studies.

There is yet a 24h entrepreneurship camp worth 1 credit unit. The students spend 1 whole day and night in a team, creating business ideas. Young entrepreneur are selected as tutors. There are a lot of  ideas born in the dark hours of the night, which are finally presented to a jury at the end of the camp. Sanna Perkiömäki has acted as a member of the jury for several times, and she says she loves to see the fancy and wild ideas burst and bubble from eager students.

For more information can be found in the time coming at www.sakky.fi as soon as the web site has been re-constructed. Sakky Adult vocational traning institute now has the second trial version of the site being tested. There will also be a link about entrepreneurship. Currently, the site already features a link to Hyvä Diili (Good Deal) apprenticeship service.

EduSci lesson plan

Lesson title: 

Overcoming obstacles of intercultural communication between Finns and Asians

Subject: International business studies and intercultural communication

Class / age group: 18-20

Number of students: 6-15

Theorist and Concept Chosen as Lesson Foundation: David Kolb

Learning objectives: Gaining basic understanding on cultural differences between the Finns and Asians

Prior knowledge of students necessary: None required, but any knowledge is beneficial

Forms of assessment: Group work (scale 1-3), written work (scale 1-3)

Lesson structure (table below)

Activity	Key outcome (e.g. students should...	Class structure (e.g. students in groups, seated individually)	Time (min.)
Introduction	Video with Finns and Asians encountering	Normal classroom setting	5 min
Main section	Teaching about cultural differences between Finns and Asians	Large circle to allow discussion	25 min
Conclusion	2 presentations, each 5 min, and discussion 5 min	All sit in a large circle, performances in the middle	15 min
Additional later work (if applicable)	Written assignment, 2 pages on teaching, own research and application, return by next week	At home	2 hours

Content:

The lesson is aimed for the international business students. In the future they are likely to work in international business, and therefore it is very imporant for them to be able to interact and communicate in a way that is culturally acceptable, in order to succeed in their projects and closing the deals. This series of lessons will focus on aspects of intercultural communication among different cultures and countries, such as Russia (a major and nearby business partner), Asia (general knowledge can later be specified), the United States, Africa, France, and Italy.

The theoretic framework applied for this lesson is Kolb's learning cycle (Wankat & Oreovicz: Teaching Engineering, ch. 15). According to David Kolb, learning requires application of several mediums, which are: active experimentation in contrast with reflective observation (transforming experience into knowledge), and abstract conceptualization and concrete exeperience (p. 292). These last two refer to how a student receives and understands information. This cycle represents steps of learning for complete understading. When all the stages are employed, a total of 90% learning efficiency is achieved (ibid.). Learning is improved when more active participation and involvement is integrated (p. 293).

The lesson displays several activities so that students with different learning styles and tendencies will gain as much as possible. There are four learner types according to Kolb: diverger, assimilator, converger, and accomodator. The first prefers motivation, stories, and journals, which will be provided by the skit, video, and blogging. Assimilator learns best when employing facts, lecturing, reading, and problem-solving, and these also also provided for. The converger enjoys simulations, experiments, (the skit will do for those), and homework with problem-solving and reporting. The last one likes self-selected projects (provided), simulations and think tank, which is covered in feedback discussion about how the performed situations could have been avoided or solved in a different way.

The lesson about cultural differences applying these principles in in many formats so that people who learn differently will be able to take home a good learning experience. First, the lesson will open with a 5-minute video on cultural miscommunication between a Finn or Scandinavian and an Asian person in a funny or dramatic way in a business setting. This simulates concrete experience, since the student can easily relate to this. Those students who typically learn from abstract ideas, will gain a lot from the main teaching and further using that as a reference, when the final task will be writing a reflection in a blog and 2-page application. The principles in the lesson content must be referred to in the written work. The teacher will bring up real-life experiences and examples of how a business venture succeeded, when appropriate cultural approach was followed, and also how some efforts failed due to lack of understanding or grave mistakes.

Then the student will independently seach information in pair and perform a short, 5-minute skit of cultural conflicts with a Finn and a selected target culture, and how to solve that conflict. This is the concrete experience part, and a deep object lesson. All these different approaches combine the learning outcomes, which are increased awareness of the cultural differences, and how to solve them in practical life, and how they affect international business.

The class in divided into small groups, which in turn will create a five-minute performance about Finns meeting a foreign business partner. The idea is to demonstrate typical differences and mistakes that may occur. After the presentation other students will comment and analyze the performance and a short discussion will follow. The students will also write a blog entry about the lesson. The teacher will summarize the main point of today's lesson, give the home work and readings for the next session (interacting with Russians).

In addition, at the end of the unit, each student will pick a country or culture that has not been taugh about in a class, they will find out about its culture from Internet, travel guides etc., and they will create a five-minute presentation (with one hour for preparation at home) to display the cultural differences and clashes. They will also think what kind of business partnerships would thrive between Finland and the selected country.

VS 2 on progressive inquiry

Progressive Inquiry and Project Learning

The aim of progressive inquiry is to understand different phenomena and solve complex problems with a scientific approach (Hakkarainen, Lonka & Lipponen: Tutkiva Oppiminen: Järki, Tunteet ja Kulttuuri Oppimisen Sytyttäjinä, Sanoma Pro 2008). According to the authors, there are 3 perspectives to intelligent activity: acquiring information, participating, and creating information. New information is built in a social group setting, as well as individually, and then it will be critically evaluated and analyzed in group sessions. The best results are achieved, when the objects of learning or research are genuine and relevant for the students. I borrowed and read parts of Hakkarainen's book on progressive inquiry, as mentioned above. The ideas seemed feasible and useful at least for an analytic person like me. Even though this theory has been written down just recently, the method has been employed even unconsciously. I would argue that a person uses various and multiple overlapping methods in learning or finding out new information, if not in a formal school setting.

Project learning

Team Saturn shared that characteristics of virtual learning are separate physical environment between teacher and a student, it happens either in real time or in a preferred time frame, and the learning environment includes elements, such as instructions, chats, blogs, video conference system, forums, and links. One of the main characteristics is that learning occurs without immediate presence of the teacher (Hyppönen, Linden 2012). I can attest this to be very true. As I am writing this text, I have reviewed the source materials and presentations, and if something has been already forgotten or not understood, I am learning right now. Hyppönen and Linden also point out that the extent of learning corresponds to the time the student has spent studying. Again, true. This is one of the weaknesses of e-learning that there is a rather limited time frame to study and review the material, at least during this iVET program. Things are easier with individual e-courses, such as basics of e-commerce, which I took a year ago. For each iVET session we are supposed to learn our own material, comprising of several articles, links, videos, etc, and also learn the content from the other presentations. I have found this very challenging when we have dealt with heavy stuff like learning theories and educational science.

How can progressive inquiry and project learning be taught then? We were asked and shown a delicious and practical example of how us as bakery/confectionery students can be taught making chocolate. This involved several different stages where we first thought about the qualities of chocolate. Vocation students are a prime audience for this teaching method, as it requires gradually deepening knowledge, learning and analyzing learning outcomes in a group.

How can e-learning be enriched by those? Technical tools have a wide array of information to probe into  progressive inquiry and project learning. Internet as a medium is just that for searching for a topic.

I am now able to consciously apply these principles into teaching. A good method would be, if I am teaching for example communication between different cultures, as this is my expertise, to make the students first think of typical situation that cause misunderstanding or their own experiences to tune their minds into the topic and make it concrete. Then I would explain the subject matter with some good illustrations and examples. Then I would ask the students to pick one country or culture and make a short (5 minutes) presentation for the next session about specific cultural aspects of communication and how to tackle them. I would then give more teaching and have the students play out some miscommunication scenarios with a few pre-selected features. In this fashion the progressive inquiry goes deeper. I would also employ discussion in pairs and a as group and assign further reading.

I survived EduPreneur boot camp and how I feel now

The two-day trip to Espoo is now complete. I took 5.42 morning train from Kuopio, because I finished work the previous evening at 10 pm, so the obvious result was tiredness. But I did contrubute and learn during the camp.

I think I expected more teaching from the experts, but it was us on the first day to present the pitches, and then the SWOT's. The best parts were the Work application game virtual version contest, as well as sharing the networks and our entrepreneurship experiences with the 1st-year business students. I have myself received 4-month training course on work application skills, marketing and productizing my experience, and I have applied for work and worked as a freelancer for the past 3 years, so I have accumulated experiences to share. About the game contest, it was awesome that our contributions were wanted and appreciated.

Few thoughts of critique towards the content, though. The 2-day session was about ideas how to teach vocational students entrepreneurship, and how it is taught elsewhere. Now, this is great, and the vocational students are an ideal target group. However, let's be realistic. Here are some hard facts.

1. Vocational students in arts (music, artisans etc). have difficulty of finding employment, whether in companies, orchestras, as musicians or as self-employed entrepreneurs. We will see what is the impact when 1,000 vocation teachers will lose their jobs, in this sector outside the capital area, and the jobs/study places will be transferred to nursing in the capital area. Are the students give a realistic idea and the hard facts of what entrepreneurship is?

2. A high percentage of new firms will not make a two-year mark, in other words most companies will never be successful. And just look at Kermansavi and other long-term Finnish companies now. Gone. In addition, during these crucial first years, most entrepreneurs will need to work long days from morning till evening, day in and day out.

3. A female entrepreneur's average income is under 2,000 euros per month. This was published recently in a women's magazine. One needs to realize that an entrepreneur must earn three times more than what will be left as the net income after taxes, social insurance expenses, rents, equipment, tools, materials, salaries to others, accountant, ad agency, running the web site, and other costs.

4. If you cannot find work in your own field or in any other field, which is the reality in Finland, the options after that are

a) to draw unemployment benefit, apply for work and wait
b) study and get more qualifications or a new profession
c) start writing a dissertation (which requires university degree and also funding, so not very likely for vocational students or graduates)
d) become an entrepreneur

Some people try entrepreneurship because there are no other options left. In one way or another I'm doing all the above now after having been a jobseeker since summer 2009. I think that a vocation education in a practical field is one of the best investments one can make, to secure employment. The companies have beautiful rhetoric in speeches and job announcement about valuing education, networking, linguistic skills, work experience, and other skills. This is all true in this sense: without the specific degree or education (such as a social worker, painter, can mechanic) you cannot get work, not matter how experienced or qualified you are. The vocational school still have a reasonable amount of funds for their teachers (the ones who are not being cut off), so there is a lot of hope in vocation education. About the entrepreneurship, I don't know.

VS4

The final presentation is now over, or that what I thought, since we discovered instantly that will be begin working on Educational Science already in 2 weeks. Anyway, this last virtual day on vocation science was the most interesting. I escaped the banging and dust clouds of our home-turned-into-a-construction-site to a friend's apartment for the virtual session.

First we learned about vocational education for special-needs students. According to the Review of Education in 2007  report Finland holds the world record in the quantity of special education given students in basic education (Kivirauma & Ruoho: Excellence Through Special Education? Lessons from the Finnish School Reform, p. 288). In addition, Finnish special educators have a leading status among the OECD countries (p. 289). It is a well-known fact that there is a high number of students who are not feeling well physically, emotionally, and mentally. Part of them require special attention and special education measures. For example in my lower secondary school days, there was a special group of students with poor academic performance and ill behavior, who were on so called observation class (tarkkailuluokka). I believe they had learning difficulties and some social issues, and a small group of about 6 gave them a change to get through the school system. While as a trend, children, youth, and adult not feeling well, the ultimate solution is not to have more special education. It treats the symptoms, and it is of course necessary, but the society should address the problems behind the low survival skills. Many children have to spend their afternoons alone without adult/ parental care and attention, and there is hardly anyone to share with things. In Finland independence is one of the key virtues since a baby starts learning and practicing skills, such as holding a spoon and dressing himself, so needing someone's help or attention is seen as weakness. This leads towards loneliness and even social exclusion. This is alarming especially among boys and men, who are raised to believe that showing emotions and talking about them is humiliating and should be avoided (not to mention dancing or singing). Showing emotions is allowed only in an ice-hockey match or when one is drunk. This is very sad. The society should take more measures in the well-being of its citizens, and maybe then special education would be less needed.

Satu made a great work and gave practical examples on how to approach and address this issue, when we are dealing with special-needs students. This does not only refer to disabled students, but also to ones with learning disabilities, or some other trauma or difficult conditions, which makes studying challenging.

We had a fruitful discussion on how to we can deal with special problems, such as when a student has recurring absences, tardies, or is (too) tired to study and the academic performance suffers. This brings to mind an American coed of mine when we studied abroad. The college had a mold problem but it had not been addressed efficiently. Mold was present in the library, gym, showers, and dorms. My coed had respiratory problems had missed classes because of this. The school had policy that you could only miss a few classes in order to make the credits and graduate. Because of too many absences, she had been threatened that she will not be allowed to graduate. Unfortunately the school tended to address any exception to rules by threatening this or that in order to control the students. This is one example where the issue was not addressed properly. Thankfully we are more flexible in Finland and also sensitive to all kinds of special needs, including dietary restrictions. In the same school there was another girl who had high cholesterol, but the school did not provide special diet meals for her, even though we had to pay for tuition and board, including the meals. The girl's mother had to cook her meals and she would bring them to school after each weekend.

I summary, many special situation can be handled with good communication between the teacher/tutor and the student concerned. We also discussed whether is the teacher's or student counselor's role to talk to the students and try to find solutions, and the conclusion was that both have their part to play.

Then followed a Mars presentation on combining vocation education and entrepreneurship. The Ministry of Education has outlined guidelines of entrepreneur education, and it is mandatory within the EU (Entrepreneurship Education in School in Europe: National Strategies, Curricula and Learning Outcomes, March 2012). According to this, entrepreneurship education is one of the main focuses during the current five-year period (2011-2016) (p. 46), and perhaps this is why also we as teachers-to-be also learn about this. I put together a video of our ongoing renovation project. We have two vocation students working under an apprenticeship contract, painting and putting wallpaper. There are benefits for all: the students see real-life work situations in a genuine setting and get good references from the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur gets affordable (free) labour, so they can offer construction projects in a competitive price. The client has reduced costs since the students do part of the work.

The third presentation was about entrepreneurship. We had a fun quiz, learned about key competencies, and how entrepreneurship education can be integrated into vocation teaching. This is a good background to go into EduPreneur boot camp.

What I took home from VS3?

The Virtual Session 3 is now over. Our team's presentation on Assessment went quite smoothly. This was nice, as we tried Prezi as the presentation tool for the first time, and there was a lot of material: several theories and sources. Our Prezi presentation can be accessed also from this link:

http://prezi.com/_c1qzj2vj5jl/edit/?auth_key=dqe3qw5&follow=teemuy

The listeners seemed to get the idea, though. In addition, we split the talk among two people. The Spiderman video, courtesy of Sandra, worked, even though ACP does not allow voice. After the presentation I rushed to work and then I had another evening course, so I could say it was a full day.

Our presentation was about How, why and when to assess learning, different forms of assessment, and quality of assessment brought into 21st century. We shared how assessment can be varied and broken into pieces, told of SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) and 5 stages of understanding (which are, namely, prestructural, unstructural, multistructural, relational, and extended abstract), formative and summative evaluation, what is the point of assessment, and why do we need assessment. The reasons are: discovering learner's strength and weaknesses, to maintain standards, and to provide evidence of learner's progress. According to Peter Jarvis, quality of learning and teaching is measured by evaluation, but it is difficult to assess competence and to divide it into different categories (Adult Education & Lifelong Learning, RoutledgeFalmer, 2004, ch. 8). As today's educational institutes are becoming more commercial, there is the economic aspect to consider, not just the quality.

In summary, I think we had too much material, and even I didn't understand in depth all that we were sharing. Some of the theories were outdated and complex (Wankat, John Biggs on setting up the criteria for assessment and assessing learning quality), but the listeners seemed to cope with what we wanted to convey.

In the other presentation by Earth we learned about competence-based qualifications and vocational skills demonstrations. We discussed in a light debate format about the pros and cons of the above-mentioned ways of evaluation. One of the group members was actually involved in this as a demonstration examiner (näyttötutkintomestari). Team Saturn talked about the role of personal evaluation. I learned that the this is regulated by the Finnish National Board of Education (32/011/2005). There are different evaluation tools, such as blogging, tests, journaling, writing reviews etc. The team had created a nice online questionnaire about the learning outcomes of VS3 that we each filled up.

I am now able to consider and apply different assessment methods in different situations, depending on the context, group of students, and the subject matter. I have learned how each assessment method measures and demonstrates learning. I also understood, how learning is internalized in different stages of learning and how the progress is evaluated.

There is now only 2 weeks to get ready for the next session, but we have already started to work on the material that deals with how to develop cooperation between vocational education and working life.