Riding the Third Wave of Social Entrepreneurship Education: Assessment of Effectiveness of Projects as a tool to learn about Social Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Kim (2010) describes two waves in the field of social entrepreneurship education and predicts the emergence of a third wave. The first wave is characterized by activities and courses run at graduate schools such as Harvard University, University of Geneva, Stanford University, and others; while the second wave is shaped by four major trends – shift from business schools to “everyone a change maker”, focus on comprehensive, rigorous social entrepreneurship course of study that combines classroom and practice, presidents and senior leaders embrace social entrepreneurship, and diversity of institutions (Kim, 2010). The third wave refers to institutions of higher education taking opportunities to build on existing social entrepreneurship programmes to act as both engines and agents of systemic change. This entails effective development of human capital who can implement pattern-changing ideas to address the world’s most pressing challenges which in turn requires the institutions to create effective pedagogies and methodologies to ensure results. In its quest to ride on the third wave of social entrepreneurship education, Universiti Kuala Lumpur Business School is constantly looking for means and strategies to improve its curriculum. This paper reports the initiatives of a lecturer to assess the effectiveness of two projects outlined in the course syllabus to determine whether these projects are effective in facilitating the achievement of intended learning outcomes. This is in line with the idea of creating effective pedagogies and methodologies in the third wave. The two projects assessed are (1) Tracking Global Entrepreneurship Development and (2) Field Observation of Social Issues. The first project is online based activity which requires students to research social entrepreneurship activities in a country assigned to their group and determine common patterns in social entrepreneurship. The second project requires students to conduct primary observations of assigned localities, named hot spots, within Kuala Lumpur to identify social challenges and propose feasible solutions. Both of these projects are carried out using the problem-based learning process comprising group interaction, individual learning, evaluation and group interaction once again (Imbos and Ronteltap,2009). The success of the projects is assessed based on whether they promote students’ ability to (1) Track and organise information on social entrepreneurship (2) Identify social problems faced by a given community and recommend feasible solutions and (3) Tap on their emotions when observing the social phenomena observed. The first assessment is carried out by a panel of three lecturers who evaluated the students’ presentation of their projects based on pre-determined rubrics including the depth of coverage, the quality of categorization and communication skills. The extent to which the second project contributes to achievement of learning outcomes is assessed in two ways – one is an evaluation of their presentation by lecturers and the other is an analysis of a reflective essay by each student on their experience during the field observation to dictate presence of affective learning. This study contributes to the knowledge base on the teaching and learning of social entrepreneurship, expanding the database on both theory and practice. The findings can be used to illuminate lecturers of social entrepreneurship on suitable approaches to teach the concepts of social entrepreneurship and to assess the attainment of knowledge and skills embedded in the field of social entrepreneurship. It can also enlighten us on how projects can be used to encourage students to view social entrepreneurship as a mean to feel and think about a way of life and how social entrepreneurship could be used as a tool to improve lives.