On April 1, Irene Lepine and Helene Sicotte of UQAM posted a series of
questions about adapting to larger format classes. We faced the same
problem in our Intro. to Entrepreneurship course a few years ago, as demand
burgeoned while teaching and support resources remained fixed. As
missionaries, we wanted to reach the larger classes, but obviously couldn't
without either lots more money or a different approach. Times being what
they are, we had to settle for the different approach. Here's what we did.
We moved into larger classrooms, and conceded that we would lecture more
and interact less from the front of the classroom. We shifted the
interaction time into 50 minute weekly seminars with 15-20 students in
them. Following a "Reflective Practitioner" philosophy, we scheduled a
series of entrepreneurs (our practitioners) into those seminars, not TAs.
The practitioners were asked to come prepared to tell 15-20 minutes of
their personal stories, then take questions. Students were told that this
was a great opportunity to meet some really interesting people -- and to
apply a BS test to the lecture and textbook material. Attendance was
monitored, sort of, with sign-in sheets, but not made compulsory with staff
supervision. On the exams, however, students were expected to be familiar
with the stories of many entrepreneurs, and to be able to use them to
illustrate their reflections on the nature of entrepreneurship. The
seminars were clearly the best way to accumulate those stories, as well as
a great way to meet some potentially useful contacts, etc..
We concentrated the TA money into one pot, and paid a pretty decent wage
for a Seminar Coordinator. That person was charged with organizing the
parade, i.e., for using profs' and the faculty's databases to identify
potential speakers, contact them, schedule the willing ones, and make all
the logistical arrangements for their participation as our guests in the
seminars.
The system appears to work pretty well, although some bugs needed to be
worked out. We found, for example, that these ENTR students had little use
for the bankers who were booked to talk about small business financing.
They also became bored if we had too many entrepreneurs from the same
sector, e.g., restaurants, in their seminar. We had some unexpected
benefits in building a broad base of participation in the local
entrepreneurial community, with many people being tickled at the respect
they were given (perhaps in contrast to the usual fund-raising requests...)
An evaluation of the experiment was conducted, and a paper on the results
was presented to the conference of the Canadian Council for Small Business
and Entrepreneurship last Fall. I would be pleased to make copies of that
paper available to anyone who requests one. Just e-mail me at:
tbryant@peregrine.bus.brocku.ca.
I would be interested in other MG-ED members' observations about the
applicability of this approach to other subject fields. It seems to me
that there is reason to expect it to work across the board, provided the
instructor is taking either an integrative or a dualistic approach to
theory and practice.
Best regards,
Tom Bryant
Brock University
+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+=
Prof. Thomas A. Bryant, Ph.D.
Entrepreneurship Program
Faculty of Business
Brock University
St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1 Canada
Tel: (905) 688-5550, ext. 4372
Fax: (905) 984-4188
e-mail:
tbryant@peregrine.bus.BrockU.ca