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The Teaching and Practice of Entrepreneurship within Canadian Higher Education Institutions

7. Dimension 4: Teaching and Learning

The teaching and learning dimension covers curricular and extracurricular activities administered through the institution's entrepreneurship education framework. Curricular activities include the development of an entrepreneurship curriculum using various courses and teaching methods. This also includes activities to encourage collaboration amongst faculties within institutions. Extracurricular activities include the use of non-traditional teaching methods.

7.1 Findings

Entrepreneurship education can be delivered either through a curriculum of courses/programs (curricular activities) or through practical hands-on experiences via business competitions or case studies (extracurricular activities). Of the surveyed institutions, in the 2007–2008 academic year, an equal proportion of students participated in curricular (2.5 percent) and extracurricular (2.3 percent) entrepreneurship activities, suggesting no preference in the way entrepreneurship education is delivered.

Figure 6 illustrates how the three Canadian subsets compare within the five sub-dimensions of the teaching and learning dimension:

• Courses: Number of courses in entrepreneurship education, by level of study (undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate).
• Degrees: Access to degree programs in entrepreneurship, by level of study.
• Curriculum: Methods used in the development of an entrepreneurship curriculum, such as learning from other institutions (within Canada and internationally), liaising with practitioners or cross-faculty/interdisciplinary collaboration.
• Teaching methods:^{Footnote 6} Use of lectures, case studies, practitioners, project teams, company visits and/or simulations.
• Extracurricular activities: Use of seminars, business plan competitions, company visits, matchmaking events between students and external stakeholders, mentoring schemes.

Figure 6: Spider Diagram of Teaching and Learning Dimension (score out of 100)^{Footnote 7}

[Description of Figure 6]

The average score for Canada and the top five institutions was high in the extracurricular activities sub-dimension, suggesting institutions offered seminars/workshops, business plan / venture capital competitions and/or mentoring schemes / personal coaching in support of offering practical hands-on experience to students. Amongst the top five institutions, one university scored below 20 in the course sub-dimension relative to the other four universities that scored between 45 and 62. As shown in Figure 6, this resulted in a low average score in the course sub-dimension for the top five institutions, relative to the overall Canadian average score.

The average score for Canada was low in the curriculum sub-dimension, indicating that institutions in Canada can further develop their entrepreneurship curriculum through exchanges on teaching methods at national or international levels or through liaising with entrepreneurs/practitioners when developing entrepreneurship teaching material. The average score for Canada was also low in the degree sub-dimension, suggesting that students may not have access to a structured approach to entrepreneurship that offers a series of courses related to various stages of the business development cycle.

Most entrepreneurship courses were found at the undergraduate level

• At the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate levels, the majority of institutions offered one to five courses in entrepreneurship (Table 5).
• On average, the most entrepreneurship courses (7.5 courses) were found at the undergraduate level. The content of these courses primarily focuses on the assessment of business development needs, opportunity recognition and problem solving.
• Irrespective of study level, 23 percent of institutions offered one or more degree programs in entrepreneurship.

Guest lecturers were used to compensate for the limited degree of entrepreneurship experience amongst academic faculty

Entrepreneurship experience is not required for teaching entrepreneurship

• The most common in-class teaching methods used were case studies, lecturing and project teams. In addition, 59 percent of surveyed institutions often used in-class visits from entrepreneurs and practitioners.
• 66 percent of institutions had more than five academic staff involved in entrepreneurship activities. However, while more than 75 percent of institutions did not require staff to have actual entrepreneurship experience, 80 percent of institutions used guest lecturers or practitioners with practical experience in entrepreneurship to some extent.

Student access to entrepreneurship courses was restricted to specific areas of study

• The majority of institutions (Table 6) offered entrepreneurship courses through business studies (95 percent) and technical (engineering) studies (39 percent).
• Universities, in general, offered entrepreneurship courses in a greater number of subject areas than degree-granting colleges or technical institutes, and were more likely to permit students to enrol in courses outside their faculty.

Non-traditional teaching methods are commonly used as a form of hands-on technical training

In addition to curricular activities, common forms of extracurricular activities included seminars/workshops (66 percent), business plan / venture capital competitions (62 percent) and mentoring schemes / personal coaching (57 percent) (Table 7).

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