Teaching Technopreneurship in the New Normal for a Better Normal
by: Adriel Nisperos
If we are to give a grade for 2020, most, if not all, would probably give it an ‘F’ for obvious reasons. Now an ‘F’ can mean many things -- Failure, Frustrating, or simply Forgettable. 2020’s series of hurdles was unprecedented, but it showed how much work still needs to be done to ensure that no one is left behind.
Let’s flashback a little bit. In March 2020, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recorded 1.37 billion students affected by school closures worldwide. That is 3 out of 4 children and youth globally. We witnessed how students, especially those in the last mile, have struggled to access learning content using digital technology as many of them do not own a laptop nor a smartphone. At the same time, we also saw how educational institutions doubled their efforts in migrating their lesson plans and curricula online to ensure that students continue learning amidst nationwide lockdowns.
For our university partners in the Innovation for Social Impact Partnership (ISIP), they are experiencing a similar dilemma in teaching Technopreneurship 101 (T101) online. With the course supposedly intended to be interactive and dynamic, professors and educators teaching the subject face challenges in keeping their students engaged.
Cheradee Ann Cabanlit, T101 instructor from the Cebu Institute of Technology University (CITU) in Cebu City and participant during ISIP’s Faculty Training on Technopreneurship Teaching, just started teaching T101 when President Duterte issued an Executive Order on April 30, that placed selected areas, including Cebu, under the Enhanced Community Quarantine. Though it was not easy, Cheradee and her fellow faculty at CITU pushed through with their classes online.
Online learning was the clear solution to continue holding classes during that time. However, Cheradee understood that not all students have the luxury to immediately purchase devices such as laptops. “What we did as a compromise, for students who might not have devices yet, is to develop a courseware or a module-type copy of the lessons. It’s composed of a whole week’s lessons and the instructions to the outputs they have to submit by the end of a certain week,” Cheradee explained.
These coursewares are uploaded online weekly, so students will just need to connect to the internet a couple of times. In efforts to guide her students, Cheradee also holds consultation sessions once in a while to check on them and their progress in class. Her students, on the other hand, expressed their difficulty in adapting to the new learning setup.
“We set up an activity in the Industrial Engineering department where students are required to write a weekly journal because we want to hear their takeaways and concerns about the course, especially under the virtual setup. Most of the complaints, though not only in the technopreneurship subject, are mostly on collaborating online since students only meet and discuss with their classmates through video calls; not all have fast internet connection nor have devices,” Cheradee shared.
These challenges are not unique to Cheradee and CITU. Many professors and educators in remote areas face similar, if not worse, issues. Preparing to face these is Marc Joseph Batoy, an Electrical Engineering instructor from Bohol Island State University (BISU), another faculty training participant.
Following the memorandum from CHED to roll out the course, BISU aims to start offering their Technopreneurship 101 class this year to their engineering students. Marc is one of the instructors who will be teaching T101 for the first time through online or distance learning mode. According to Marc, their department is in the midst of designing their T101 syllabus and providing their instructors training in technopreneurship teaching. Participating in the ISIP faculty training is one of the ways he equips himself with the knowledge and skills about the course.
“I’m learning all the concepts and details of technopreneurship here in the training. I’m glad that I am able to collaborate and network with fellow faculty members in the training, so I can benchmark our plans against how other universities are doing it,” Marc shared.
One of the outcomes of the ISIP Faculty Training in 2019 is that participants were able to establish networks with fellow T101 professors and instructors from other universities. Through these networks, they get to share their experiences and best practices in teaching technopreneurship, designing a detailed syllabus, and exploring ways to collaborate.
[READ: Creating a New Breed of Social Entrepreneurs through T101]
With COVID-19 changing the game in teaching technopreneurship, how can instructors navigate and still manage to create a quality learning experience for their students?
ISIP Faculty Training on Technopreneurship Teaching 2020
Lesson #1: Record Your Classes
Ken Singer, Managing Director of the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET) at the University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and lead trainer during the ISIP Faculty Training, shared that the online mode of instruction provides an opportunity for faculty to learn many lessons. “In Zoom, everything is recorded, so you can now go back and look at all the things you did right, you did wrong. [When doing group activities] You can peer into each group as they work on their project, which you can’t do in person because you can’t be in 20 places at the same time. Now you can,” Ken explains.
Recording classes benefit not just students when they miss their online class. It can benefit educators too. Educators, even researchers in the field of education and technology, can make the most of this setting to collect experiences and cases, and understand how instruction can be best delivered online. “We’ll get a whole year’s worth of learning from the ‘Zoom environment’. I hope the instructors are recording their own teaching too because that would be helpful for them moving forward,” Ken adds.
David Law, Director of Global Academic Programs at UC Berkeley and also a lead trainer during the ISIP Faculty Training, shared that teaching online allows instructors to think and plan their different interactions more purposefully. With the help of the recordings, they can identify what triggers students to respond, participate actively, and keep them engaged throughout the class.
Lesson #2: Gamify Learning
During the first day of the virtual faculty training, Ken and David asked our team to randomly group the participating instructors. They were specific that no two instructors in a group should belong to the same university, so they can expand their networks and learn from each other’s experiences and teaching methodologies.
Normally, during pre-pandemic times, people shake hands and sit together when they meet for the first time. In the new normal, however, meeting people through video calls can be uncomfortable especially when one only sees the other person’s avatar. To avoid this and ensure that groups will establish good rapport throughout the five-day training, Ken and David asked the groups to play a cooperative shouting game called Spaceteam after the first day’s session. Ken stayed on the call and went around to see if participants would play the game.
The next day, Ken shared his observations with the class. Groups who played the game longer tend to be more comfortable collaborating during group activities and exercises. Other than this, they tend to have members who are more comfortable speaking up and more open to providing feedback to improve their group’s output.
Cheradee Ann Cabanlit of Cebu Institute of Technology University (CITU) and Marc Joseph Batoy of Bohol Island State University (BISU)
A college student attends at least three subjects in a day, and it can be exhausting. Gamifying learning is one way to keep students engaged and actively participating throughout the class.
“When we first played the space game, it was an eye-opener for me. I realized that games do really work in classes. Before that activity, I was quite afraid to open up because I was in a group with teachers who are experienced in teaching technopreneurship. The game, however, stitched us closer together and led each member of our group to really contribute a lot to our outputs and assignments,” Marc shares.
Cheradee added that she is looking forward to applying the gamified approach in her technopreneurship classes to keep her students excited and active during class.
Lesson #3: Mix It Up
At the core of teaching technopreneurship is inculcating the entrepreneurial mindset on students, developing a mindset that sees problems as opportunities, and creating innovative solutions that address those problems. Now confronted by the pandemic, how might educators take advantage of the virtual setting to still deliver quality learning content to their students? Ken and David suggest mixing it up.
It’s an exciting paradox to think that despite the pandemic forcing us to be apart, we’ve still managed to be closer -- virtually. One aspect of a virtual learning environment that educators, not just in technopreneurship, can take advantage of is bringing in what David calls as “outside voices”.
“I will say that Zoom or any virtual environment does open up the possibility of bringing people into your learning environment that would have been virtually impossible to do before. We would expect people to travel to come to the classroom; now they can just join in and share their experiences with students,” David shares.
Especially in teaching technopreneurship, learning from practitioners can be a huge advantage to improving the learning experience of students. This is also a common recommendation from visiting professors who have been deployed in various partner universities of ISIP. What we’re learning is that being entrepreneurial also has to manifest in the way educators teach technopreneurship.
“You can’t [just] teach entrepreneurship through a textbook because you’re trying to train people to create new things, to do things in new ways, to always innovate in everything; and textbooks are historical. It looks at past experiences. And so even the tools in education are in question in entrepreneurship,” Ken explains.
Ken added that infusing games, interactive activities, and experiential learning in class may take a long time before all educators get used to it as most of them are trained traditionally. But the change in mindset will come soon. He also shared a brief backstory on the origin of Venture Dojo as a name and concept, “Entrepreneurship is much more of an active sport; it is a martial art in some sense. This is why we call our program Venture Dojo since so much of this is practice, so much of this is sparring -- active learning and teaching.”
Lesson #4: Revisit Your Role in the Classroom
We learned from the previous lesson that technopreneurship is a unique subject to teach. Educators should be leading by example when they say students have to be always innovating in everything they do. This entails re-examining their role in the classroom. How can educators go beyond delivering learning content and teach innovatively?
“We’re all in this journey together. What I say to my students as their instructor is ‘I’m learning as much as you are. You are my teacher.’”
Like Marc, a common concern raised by faculty members during the training is how they can teach something that’s outside their field of expertise. As engineering educators, running and scaling businesses are not necessarily their cup of tea. David explains that this doesn’t have to be the case, “We need to convince teachers to release the anxiety that I think they have where they have to be the expert, that they have to be the one that’s always in front of the classroom. But really they are much like a [music] conductor. You’re going to have entrepreneurs, other faculty members, local industry partners, and former students participating in your class to bring all these pieces together.”
For most of activities, Ken prompts instructors that their role in class is to draw out the answers and lessons from the students. Ken adds, “We’re all in this journey together. What I say to my students as their instructor is ‘I’m learning as much as you are. You are my teacher.’”
Lesson #5: Adjust Your Measurements of Success
Technopreneurship teaches engineering students how to innovate and run scalable and sustainable businesses, but there’s more to it.
“It’s important not to fall into the trap of evaluating your class by the number of successful new ventures created or the number of projects that live on for years. Those things are great, but it doesn’t happen that often. Lots of times they [educators] are going to see their students leave their class, graduate from the university, and go to work for a company in a traditional career,” David reminds educators. Completing the T101 doesn’t necessarily mean students are going to be entrepreneurs right away, but they gain leadership skills and a renewed sense of confidence within them.
“At some point when they have some more maturity and experience, they will come back around those who have the passion and the fire for entrepreneurship; and they will start something,” David adds.
Ken also emphasized going back to the ‘why’ as educators teach technopreneurship. He highlights the importance for students to know why they need to learn something and how they can apply this lesson in life whether they start a business or not. According to Ken, technopreneurship should teach students two things that are valuable in the industry today: self-reflection and self-advocacy. Self-reflection is the ability to reflect on what works and what does not; and then changing it accordingly. Self-advocacy, on the other hand, is the ability to advocate and make others believe in an idea.
Capping every session during the faculty training, Ken and David ask the participants to make a 3-minute vlog as part of their homework. Participants were provided with a prompt that enables them to reflect on their accomplishments for the day and the lessons they learned. These vlogs are then shared with the whole class on the next day to see if others can relate or are interested in adding more to the reflection. They use this approach to stimulate self-reflection and self-advocacy.
“We use vlogs as a constant temperature check. It’s important to design the prompts carefully because what you’re trying to trigger is the ‘connecting of the dots’. You want your students to take all the chaotic information that’s been sent their way throughout the week and be able to connect all the dots between the lessons that have been taught and the lessons they taught themselves,” Ken explains.
Teaching Leadership through Impact-Driven Technopreneurship
We’ve seen in many reports throughout 2020 how huge the impact of the pandemic has been. It pushed back years of progress in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and exacerbated existing challenges. Quoting Liu Zhenmin, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, in the 2020 Sustainable Development Goals report she says,
“The pandemic abruptly disrupted implementation towards many of the SDGs and, in some cases, turned back decades of progress...It has exposed harsh and profound inequalities in our societies and is further exacerbating existing disparities within and among countries.”
We are not only seeing this tremendous impact but feeling it as well in all aspects of our lives. That can be the trigger that ignites the entrepreneurial spirit within people, more especially the younger generation. Impact-driven technopreneurship can be the fuel of this kindling urge to take action.
David Law and Ken Singer, Lead Trainers during the 2020 Faculty Training, shares how Technopreneurship teaches students to be leaders.
“Entrepreneurship is a vehicle to teach leadership. It’s no longer just about educating students; it’s about empowering them. It’s no longer just about leaving school having been educated, but being empowered to do something with that education,” Ken expresses.
Combining the tools and business acumen learned in technopreneurship, with skills in self-reflection and self-advocacy, and with the principles of social impact and sustainability, educators are training a generation of leaders who are, as Ken puts it, “proactively and independently taking on leadership roles in areas that need leadership.”
As also an instructor in Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship, Cheradee proudly shares that some of her students already have the passion to act against issues in their community. “I’m really happy that some students already have the heart for the SDGs. Some students really wanted to provide solutions for climate action, some are passionate in quality education,” says Cheradee.
During the pandemic, she recalled one of her Industrial Engineering students starting a fundraising drive called ‘TSUPERHERO’ to raise money for displaced drivers in Cebu City because of the community quarantine. Through the initiative and the collective action of her students, they raised more than PHP100,000 for their beneficiaries.
“What actually made her start the project is because her father is also a driver. She knows what the other drivers feel, and this was a result of integrating the SDGs in our subjects in industrial engineering,” Cheradee adds.
Marc further highlights the importance of raising the awareness of young people on issues around them and the SDGs. “When we developed our ‘how might we…’ [during the training], we looked for the SDG which we can all relate to. Since all of us are teachers, we selected SDG 4: Quality Education. If students understand the SDGs they want to support, then they can fully create an impact towards these goals and in their communities,” Marc shared.
An ‘F’ for Follow-through
As final pieces of advice, Ken and David shared two important lessons that educators should keep in mind. The first is to view this global situation as like a laboratory. This is an opportunity to try different things and experiment. Ken notes that while we have general guidelines to follow, “no one has the right answers. There are no best practices.” That said, educators should dedicate more time to observe and see what works. It’s an exciting inquiry finding out which education model works best after the pandemic.
The second and final piece of advice for educators is to practice empathy. No one is spared from the impacts of the pandemic. As David repeatedly mentions throughout our interview with him and Ken, it’s important to meet students where they are. He shares, “I think it [empathy] is needed. Everyone is going through their own different struggles to try to meet people halfway where possible. Enjoy the journey; that’s where the learning takes place.”
For Cheradee and Marc, they are looking forward to applying what they have learned in their classes. Cheradee, aside from infusing games and vlogs in her T101 teaching, will also improve their incubation program at CITU. She also plans to build more partnerships with industries to ensure that her students’ ideas can be potentially funded. Marc, on the other hand, will focus on laying the foundations of their T101 subject at BISU with the help of their university academic council and with the guidance of the network he has built during the faculty training.
Admittedly, the pandemic is something that we never thought we’d experience in our lifetime. But it’s an incredible opportunity to witness how people are working together to quickly bounce forward into a new and better normal. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres marks this as a “generational opportunity to build back a more equal and sustainable world” however frustrating or forgettable this 2020 is. But to build back better, we need to see this 2021 as a year of follow-throughs and pick up where we left off in achieving the SDGs, leaving no one behind.
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Adriel Nisperos is a passionate and mission-driven communications professional. Gaining a background in development communication, Adriel uses communication to advocate for quality education, social innovation, and sustainability in and outside the work that he does. He is currently the Communications Coordinator for the Innovation for Social Impact Partnership (ISIP) project, empowering social entrepreneurs and innovators by telling stories of impact.