developing an innovative course in design and ... · developing an innovative course in design and...

Proceedings of INCEDI 2016 Conference 29th-31st August 2016, Accra, Ghana 37 ISBN: 978-9988-2-3994-7

DEVELOPING AN INNOVATIVE COURSE IN DESIGN AND

ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR AN AFRICAN UNIVERSITY

*SENA AGBODJAH AGYEPONG, ANTHONY EKOW SPIO, THERESA DEI DZANIE,

OPHELEY SALIHU

Ashesi University College

GHANA

Email: *[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Developing the next generation of ethical entrepreneurial leaders, without exposing all students

to formal training in entrepreneurship, was a shortfall at Ashesi University. With an existing

capstone entrepreneurship option which ensures active, experiential and experimental

pedagogical approach, Ashesi still saw it expedient to extend this opportunity to students of all

majors. In 2013, the journey to start a course, that helped the University better achieve its

mission, commenced at an Executive Committee meeting. Within a curriculum that was full,

and overflowing with core and elective courses waiting to be deployed, a unified community

of administrators, Heads of Departments and faculty, brainstormed how this can become a

reality. This paper discuses the journey Ashesi took to arrive at what is currently running as

Foundations of Design and Entrepreneurship (FDE), a maiden creative problem solving and

basics of business course, heavily drawing on design thinking, design and entrepreneurship.

The course was started in September 2015, after two years of planning and development. FDE

seeks to inspire and equip all freshmen regardless of their majors, with foundational skills in

entrepreneurship. Lessons this paper seeks to share include how a purposed institution can be

innovative, the processes necessary for developing new programmes, and failure points to be

mindful. This will inform peers and institutions who want to innovate entrepreneurial education

in the country, by developing innovative courses to shape graduates ready to transform the

continent, and represent Africa on the world platform.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Education, Curriculum Development, Design,

Innovation

1.0 Introduction

It is widely agreed that entrepreneurship plays a critical role in the economic development of

countries. (2006), entrepreneurship, specifically; opportunity entrepreneurship as against

necessity entrepreneurship, has a positive influence on national economic growth. Volkmann

(2009) articulated. According to Acs the critical role of entrepreneurial people in creating wealth

and economic growth. Mason (2011) observed that entrepreneurship has gained prominence in

both developed and developing nations; and that education and entrepreneurship are the panacea

for poverty and economic development respectively. Consequently, governments in both

developed and developing nations are making significant investments in entrepreneurial

education and training (Robb, Valerio and Parton, 2014).

According to Kigotho (2014), Robb, Valerio and Parton (2014) have identified entrepreneurship

education and training as a catalyst that could stimulate innovation and generate jobs among

university graduates, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where graduate unemployment rates are

high. Volkmann (2009) recommends that entrepreneurship education should start right from

primary school through to higher education institutions and beyond. The report further makes

mailto:[email protected]


the point that, entrepreneurial success can be taught, and wonders what, if so, is the best way to

teach it (Robb, et al, 2014).

According to them, the landscape of what is being taught in these contexts currently is poorly

known. They indicate that, some of these courses emphasizes socio-emotional skills that include

leadership, psychology of planning, personal initiative, persuasion and negotiation, while others

concentrate purely on development of business acumen and mind-sets. Robb, et al (2014) added

that, while some of these universities claim to prepare students for careers as entrepreneurs, they

also aim to prepare them for careers in entrepreneurship promotion as entrepreneurship

facilitators. This has the students in a dilemma, without enough focus to choose, hence go for

the safest, which is to get employed. These three countries, can be said to generally lack what

the proper approach will be for teaching entrepreneurship and making entrepreneurs out of

students.

Kigotho (2014) summarized this by recounting what, a faculty at the Kwame Nkrumah

University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and contributor to the Ghanaian case studies

said…

But whereas Kenya and Mozambique show signs of entrepreneurship education and

training being integrated across all the universities, in Ghana entrepreneurship education

programmes are mainly concentrated in private universities…

One such private university in Ghana, Ashesi University College (Ashesi), has a four-year

undergraduate curriculum containing a liberal arts core emphasizing writing, mathematical

reasoning, and critical thinking. With about 1 out of every 20 graduates starting successful

business enterprises in Ghana, some of which have gained international recognition and won

international awards, it did realize the need for entrepreneurship in its formative years.

Ashesi’s mission, is to “educate a new generation of ethical, entrepreneurial leaders in Africa;

to cultivate within our students the critical thinking skills, the concern for others and the courage

it will take to transform a continent”. All students complete a four semester leadership seminar

focused on ethics, leadership, and community service. This aspect of its core curriculum aids in

achieving the ‘ethical leadership’ aspect of its mission.

Additionally, the university integrates a set of learning goals into its four-year curriculum. It was

however realized, that entrepreneurship was missing explicitly in its curriculum, except for a

few Business Administration majors, who opted for the Capstone Entrepreneurship track. Ashesi

was not fully achieving its mission to aid it in achieving its goal of preparing Africans to

transform Africa. The University, unanimously agreed on a new course dubbed, FDE, to help

fill this gap. After 2 years of planning, FDE finally started with a team of 6 faculty members, 6

faculty interns, 8 student coaches and 193 freshmen. This paper shares the experience of

developing this course from when the concept was born, through to the 12th of September, 2015,

when the course actually started.

This is a particularly important journey to share because, the process to developing this

innovative course is in itself innovative, and uses user-centered design, reflecting in the

pedagogical choices: mainly learner-centered and action-oriented. With its unique pedagogy,

students form and run entrepreneurial ventures during the year-long course. Ashesi is one of the

very few liberal arts colleges around the world offering entrepreneurship, and amongst the very

few who adopt this pedagogy in entrepreneurial education. It is the only one that has explicitly

combined design thinking and the entrepreneurial process, to aid in the development of customer

centric products and services. Other institutions can learn from this process, to help them

innovate their curriculum to suit the needs of their students and the market that employs them.


2.0 Review of literature

2.1 Entrepreneurial Education

Pittaway and Cope (2007) in their use of systematic review of evidence methodology to analyze

articles and publications on entrepreneurship education came to the conclusion that,

entrepreneurship education has had an influence on students’ propensity and intentionality for

entrepreneurship. They also discovered that inadequate business knowledge and perceived risks

served as a hindrance to students in starting entrepreneurial ventures. They recognized the need

to run business programmes in higher educational institutions to address these challenges

(Oakley, Mukhtar and Kipling, 2002). There has been an ongoing argument as to whether

entrepreneurship can be taught or not. As Kuratko (2005) has argued, the relevant question is

not ‘can entrepreneurship be taught?’ but ‘what should be taught and how should it be taught?’

– a proposition he attributes to Ronstadt (1987). Hegarty (2006) and Volkmann (2009) observed

that, there are studies that show that, some entrepreneurial behaviors can be taught and learned

by young people or entrepreneurs, and academic institutions are central to achieving that. This

is also supported by Drucker (1985), who articulated that entrepreneurship is not a mystery, and

like any discipline it can be learned.

Volkmann (2009) reported that, as many as 50% of graduates who leave Ghanaian universities

and polytechnics fail to find jobs for two years after their national service, and 20% do not find

jobs for three years. Dzisi 2014 stresses that, it is incumbent on higher educational institutions

to train and prepare students to work in a dynamic, rapidly changing entrepreneurial and global

environment. To ensure that higher educational institutions produce graduates who can mobilize

local resources to create their own enterprises and offer employment, tertiary educational

institutions have been built by the Government of Ghana to bridge this gap (Dzisi 2014).

Entrepreneurship, according to Birch (1979) has also been identified as a key source of job

creation. Entrepreneurship job creation is derived either through self-employment growth or

through supplying goods and services to the corporate sectors (Fritsch 2004). It is therefore

essential that these skills are taught. Entrepreneurship education, according to Dzisi (2014) is a

whole developmental philosophy, a change of mind set and paradigm shift in educating the

youth.

Politis (2005) describes entrepreneurial learning as a process that facilitates the development of

necessary knowledge for being effective in starting up and managing new ventures. Volkmann

(2009) has advocated that introducing the entrepreneurship courses in colleges should promote

entrepreneurial learning. Volkmann (2009) asserts that entrepreneurial learning entails

cooperative learning; taking entrepreneurs as models; doing and experience; developing

entrepreneurial ideas; working out problem solutions, and recognizing that mistakes can be

learning opportunities and seizing an opportunity to create new ventures. Robb, Valerio, and

Parton (2014) noted that, given the potential beneficial spillovers of entrepreneurship,

governments around the world have taken an interest in interventions that promote and facilitate

entrepreneurial success through required support systems and the removal of barriers to

entrepreneurship (McKernan 2002; DeMel, McKenzie, and Woodruff 2009). Educational

institutions will thus need to look beyond just teaching entrepreneurship, and provide an

enabling ecosystem to foster simulations and testing. The start however, is the development of

a good entrepreneurship course or programme.

2.2 Determinants of course development in higher education

In his book, Fink (2013) recommends that, when teachers are designing courses, they should

start by examining what he calls, situational factors. He added that, while they do this, they

should decide which of the factors are significant and worth taking into consideration when


setting the learning goals, designing the feedback and assessment measures and, teaching and

learning activities of the course. Fink (2013) reckons that, this initial activity is crucial to

designing and delivering a successful course. He cites situational factors such as: expectations

of society at large concerning the education of students; the number of students who enroll for

the course and level of the course; curricular goals of the institution or department; nature of the

subject; whether it is primarily cognitive or includes learning of skills; characteristics of learners

regarding their professional aspirations/ goals and level of knowledge; and characteristics of

teachers and pedagogical challenge of the course.

One factor of dire interest, considering the mission of a university like Ashesi, is a call to meet

the needs of society at large, and specifically addressing African economies’ need to create jobs

for 200 million mostly unemployed youth. This number is expected to increase to 910 million

in 2050 (African Economic Outlook, 2015). This perspective is echoed by a call by the World

Economic Forum’s Technical Advisory Group for Entrepreneurship Education (Volkmann,

2009) for increase in entrepreneurship education and the use of a revolutionary approach to

entrepreneurship education, following the 2008 financial crises in major economies of the world

that threatened the global economy. The call is succinctly articulated by:

World Economic Forum’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for Entrepreneurship

Education encourage public and private sector leaders to take a revolutionary, not an

evolutionary, approach. Entrepreneurship education is needed to build entrepreneurial

human capital for the society of the future. We need to encourage a more

entrepreneurial culture and develop the necessary skills, attitudes and behaviours to

prepare young people and others to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. We also

need more entrepreneurial institutions and societies. (pg. 17)

Another determinant of courses or programmes that higher education institutions offer is the

quest to meet the needs of students, parents, and providers of scholarship or donors. Volkmann

(2009) observed that, the demand for entrepreneurship education is driven by students who are

keen to do a course in business planning and creating start-ups.

2.3 Designing Courses

European Commission (2008) and Robb, Valerio and Parton (2014) have categorized learning

outcomes for entrepreneurship education and training programmes into four domains. The first,

entrepreneurial mind-sets, refers to the socio-emotional skills such as self-confidence,

leadership, creativity, risk propensity, motivation, resilience, and self-efficacy. The second,

entrepreneurial capabilities, refers to entrepreneurs’ competencies, knowledge, and technical

skills such as management skills, accounting, marketing, and technical knowledge. The third,

entrepreneurial status, refers to skills associated with activities such as starting a business,

becoming employed, or achieving a higher income. The fourth domain relates to skills to

improve entrepreneurial performance, such as gaining higher profits, increased sales, greater

employment of others, or higher survival rates. Kuratko (2005) and Volkmann (2009) agree with

these learning outcomes in observing that, entrepreneurship goes beyond writing business plans

and creating ventures to include creativity, innovation, and way of thinking and acting relevant

to all parts of the economy and society.

Another important factor to pay keen attention to is the contents of such courses, and their ability

to aid the realization of learning goals, once they are delivered. Volkmann (2009) has argued

that new venture creation is different from managing a corporate business. Consequently,

different contents have been recommended for entrepreneurship education, which should focus

on promoting entrepreneurial behaviour, attitudes and skills of students. The contents


recommended for entrepreneurship education include creativity, new venture creation, business

idea development and opportunity recognition, business planning, leadership, entrepreneurial

marketing, entrepreneurial finance and growth management as well as soft skills such as

negotiation (Solomon et al., 2002).

The choice of pedagogy is also essential to the course development process. In Ghana,

entrepreneurship is generally taught as a bachelor degree and graduate courses in business

administration. The focus of these programmes tend to build the knowledge base of students and

expect them to apply the knowledge when they set up their own businesses. The pedagogy is

largely content-centered teaching delivered through lectures and occasional case analysis. The

predominant modes of assessment of the entrepreneurship courses in Ghana are exams and

preparation of business plans at the end of the course. It is important to note that, Ashesi’s

pedagogical approach to education, departs from this norm by adopting learner-centered and

action-oriented approaches. In line with Ashesi’s approach, Volkmann (2009) has stated

entrepreneurship education requires a shift from the traditional way of teaching in higher

education:

Generally speaking, modified teaching contents and methods are required in comparison to

a classical understanding of university education, in order to develop and encourage the

necessary competences for entrepreneurial thinking and acting. From a pedagogical point of

view more attention is being paid to develop students’ capacity to connect thought to action

and theory to practice.” (pg. 62)

This calls for a course design and pedagogical approach, which allows students to apply

knowledge or engage in entrepreneurial action. For instance, according to Volkmann, (2009), in

Europe, there is a concerted approach through what is called the Bologna Process to design

entrepreneurial programmes that enable even undergraduate students to create their own

ventures. The approach recommended here is action-oriented learning, which Polities (2005)

refers to as experiential learning, where students have the opportunity to engage in

entrepreneurial actions such as taking decisions and learning from their actions.

Volkmann (2009) has also recommended different pedagogical approach to entrepreneurship

education. It has been argued that, the learning environment should create an opportunity for

students to experience different entrepreneurial challenges, try-out their entrepreneurial ideas,

create as well as run their own small ventures. He asserts in the report that, the teaching approach

where the teacher serves more as a moderator and promotes interactive, interdisciplinary and

proactive learning is the most appropriate. Volkmann (2009) has identified and compiled from

relevant literature the following list of procedures and methods for engendering and simulating

entrepreneurial learning and behaviour: practical case studies, especially of high growth

enterprises (written, live and video cases); group and team techniques for creating new business

ideas and managing growth; business games and simulations (for business formation, early

development and growth of the enterprise); lectures from entrepreneurs and other practitioners

(possibly in connection with visits to high-growth enterprises); interviews with entrepreneurs,

especially high-growth entrepreneurs; project work; and development and assessment of

business plans as a foundation of student enterprises (development of new venture creation and

growth projects).


3.0 FDE Development decisions

The design of FDE was influenced by the factors discussed by Fink (2013) which include:

expectations of society at large concerning the education of students; the number of students

who enroll for the course and level of the course; curricular goals of the institution or

department; nature of the subject; whether it is primarily cognitive or includes learning of skills;

characteristics of learners regarding their professional aspirations and level of knowledge; and

characteristics of teachers and pedagogical challenge of the course. In line with the mission and

teaching pedagogy of Ashesi, the university has positioned this programme to contribute to

solving Africa’s problems, which includes massive youth unemployment. This requires

preparing Ashesi students to play a role in creating jobs, a perspective echoed by the call by

World Economic Forum in 2009.

The design and subsequent launch of FDE in 2015, is Ashesi University’s answer to the call by

the World Economic Forum’s Technical Advisory Group for Entrepreneurship Education

(2009) for increase in entrepreneurship education and the use of a revolutionary approach to

entrepreneurship education. FDE is revolutionary in three ways: the course is available and

compulsory for all freshmen regardless of their majors; action-oriented, learner-centered with

experiential learning practices constituting the pedagogical approach of the course; and the

requirement of students to set and run entrepreneurial ventures as they pursue the course. The

second consideration for designing and launching FDE, is to stay true to Ashesi’s mission and

create the opportunity for students’ right from their freshmen year to start experimenting with

the Ashesi learning goals. This effort will enable the realization of the objective of increasing

the number of Ashesi graduates who start businesses from 5% to 20%, within five to ten years

after graduation.

Another determinant of courses or programmes that higher education institutions offer is the

quest to meet the needs of students, parents, and donors. Volkmann (2009) stressing on the need

for entrepreneurship education is one that falls in line with the development of FDE at Ashesi,

where students run businesses abound, some of which have received funding from organizations

such as the Delia Lama Fellowship and the Ford Foundation. It is interesting to note that, the

majority of Ashesi alumni who have started and are running successful businesses are Computer

Science graduates who did not benefit from any mainstream business courses. This resulted in

them going through some avoidable challenges, calling for a need to expose all students of the

university, to some entrepreneurial education and training. This need coupled with parents’

expectations to see their wards secure gainful employment after graduation made the launch of

FDE imperative. It does not only prepare students to start ventures after graduation but further

increases their prospects to be the best of employees.

Another interesting observation which factored into the need for FDE was the need to give every

student basic business appreciation skills. This need was raised by instructors of the BA

department, who realized that there was no single course that gave students a holistic

appreciation of the fundamentals of business. FDE thus serves as an excellent preparation for

students seeking to major in Business Administration.

With a mission to educate a new generation of ethical entrepreneurial leaders to transform

Africa, Ashesi expects a growing number of its graduates to start enterprises, or lead

entrepreneurial ventures, to create jobs for African youth. This expectation is based on the

premise that, entrepreneurship can be learned and entrepreneurship education has the capacity

to nurture the skills, inspire and provide students with the requisite knowledge for


entrepreneurship. One of the FDE course objectives is “building students’ skills for

entrepreneurial leadership and preparing them for entrepreneurial action after graduation”.

FDE has been designed to fit the four domains the European Commission (2008) and Robb,

Valerio and Parton (2014) proposed to categorize learning outcomes for entrepreneurship

education and training programmes. This was done by engaging content and pedagogy that

shapes the mindset of students by exposing them to, and equipping them with, some fundamental

social and life skills. It builds their capacity by teaching them to identify entrepreneurial

opportunities, using design thinking, and then having them simulate businesses. Additionally,

FDE has students experimenting in this simulation effort, to a point where interested students

are able to enter into a student run entrepreneurial accelerator. The philosophy agrees with

Kuratko (2005) and Volkmann (2009) that, entrepreneurship goes beyond writing business plans

and creating ventures, to include creativity, innovation, and way of thinking and acting relevant

to all parts of the economy and society – hence the heavy deployment of design thinking in FDE.

The learning outcomes of FDE are comprehensive and cover crucially all the relevant outcomes

for entrepreneurship education and training. The learning outcomes are:

1. Realize the essence of problem solving utilizing design principles and innovation as an

integral aspect of business enterprises;

2. Develop business concepts and experience the nature of business as an integrated

enterprise;

3. Acquire soft skills with a focus on creativity, team and leadership, business negotiations

and small business management; and

4. Practice entrepreneurship through venture development, launch and customer

acquisition.

Putting such a comprehensive course, which incorporates the current thinking in entrepreneurial

education, course development and the appropriate pedagogy, took a core team of 3, 2 years of

planning, development and testing. The first year of running FDE, in the 2015/16 academic year,

was the major pilot of the course. This will however not be discussed in this paper as it focusses

on sharing the development journey.

4.0 FDE Development Process

The development of FDE went through various stages from when the idea was first formed,

through to when the course was launched in September 2015. Through this almost 3-year long

process, which included about a year of strategic decisions, and 2 years of actual planning and

development, various members of the Ashesi Community, formed teams at different points in

time, to undertake various aspects of this development process. This section of the paper

discusses this process.

4.1 The beginning: conceptualization and strategy formulation

The thoughts of developing FDE sprung up in 2012, after an Executive Committee (ExCo)

meeting which discussed amongst other issues, the need for students across majors to develop

entrepreneurial skills. The ExCo was aware that, most alumni entrepreneurs were Computer

Science graduates, with no entrepreneurial training. This issue was further discussed at the

Academic Council (AC) meeting on reviewing and updating the curriculum. The need for a new

course that will give all students a foundation and knowledge in entrepreneurship, business

development and management was realized, even though BA and Management Information


Systems (MIS) majors could take the capstone entrepreneurship class. Shortly after this, the BA

department met to brainstorm on goals to be achieved by the year 2020. With most faculty

members present at the meeting, and not being privy to the ExCo and AC conversations, it was

interesting that the BA Department’s Vision 2020 was in line with these earlier conversations.

The aim of the Vision 2020 strategy document, based on the university’s mission is to propel

the BA department to become a leading business school in Africa for producing ethical

entrepreneurial leaders who will be providing leadership for African enterprises and

development. The specific objective among the 4 specific objectives, which relates direct to the

need for FDE is: 20% of graduates setting up their own businesses five to ten years after

graduation. To achieve this, the BA department developed an action plan which was centered

on entrepreneurship and innovation. Those directly related to FDE were: to set up a core

freshman course to expose all students of Ashesi to entrepreneurship; and to set up an enterprise

fund to support new entrepreneurial education. The then Head of Department (HOD) presented

Vision 2020 to the ExCo, who received it and pledged their support. It was also presented to a

cross-section of faculty, which commenced a search for ‘space’ in the curriculum to host this

year-long course, as well as a team to drive it.

4.2 The Development Team

In order to develop and implement this course, there was the need to consolidate resources – key

being the right human resources. A first attempt at formulating this team was a meeting

convened by the then HOD of the Arts and Sciences Department, the Design faculty member

and then the Negotiations and Creative Problem Solving (NCPS) faculty as it was their courses

that were going to be replaced by FDE. After a couple of meetings, it was realized that this

course will be better housed in the BA department, thus the HOD of BA was invited into the

conversation and the project was handed over to that department. The NCPS faculty, who also

happens to be a Project Management Professional (PMP), had then started an entrepreneurship

high school enrichment programme, was appointed as the project lead and later became the FDE

Coordinator of the teaching team. She had also had prior experience developing courses for a

Building Technology programme for another private university in Ghana, in 2010, and re-

designed a number of Ashesi courses.

The initial team, which was formed in 2013, comprised two Finance faculty, the Design faculty,

and the HOD, who is a Marketing faculty. This team however did not function as expected

mainly due to the large size and balancing this with hectic teaching loads. The Finance faculty

especially were also in the process of developing a new Finance major. The team was

reconstituted in early 2014. In the Fall of 2015, a visiting entrepreneurship faculty joined the

team for the fall semester. Assistance to help manage the administrative aspects of the course

development, which became overwhelming, was sought in the BA Department Coordinator.

Communication within the team was mainly by face-to-face conversations in biweekly

meetings, countless informal face-to-face interactions, phone calls and through WhatsApp social

media group. Documents were shared using a cloud file hosting service: Dropbox. It was

essential to store all documentation in the cloud as a risk mitigation plan.

4.3 The FDE Project and its Management

The development of FDE was managed purely as a project, which according to the PMBOK®

guide, is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.

Developing FDE was a temporary endeavor, as it had a start date and was supposed to be

completed by September 2015, for the course to start. The outcome was a course which utilized

both human and financial resources. It went through the project management process: being


initiated by the BA department, going through planning and execution, while monitoring the

plan closely during execution and controlling deviations, and finally closed, in September 2015,

when the course was started. It was essential to adopt such a methodology for the development

of FDE as it was a very complex endeavor, with a lot of stakeholders who needed to be managed

properly to ensure success. The duration was also short, granted that the university did not

employ additional human resources so coupling this with the regular course load, needed to be

properly planned and managed.

The development of the course spanned a two-year duration with a slow paced, and poorly

monitored first year, and a rather fast paced, and properly executed second year. This was a

failure in the management of the project as the enormity of the task required all two years.

Planning was simply done using excel, detailing the task, who was responsible, the start date,

the end date, resources they would require and a column for additional comments. At bi-weekly

meetings, the team reviewed the plan and decided on the actions for the next two weeks. There

was a lot of emphasis on the content at the initial stages, developing the detailed course outline,

schedule and a hand book. There were in all, 12 versions of the course outline and schedule,

with each version going for review with various stakeholders including: Ashesi faculty; faculty

from Northwestern University, Northeastern University, Babson College; Ashesi students,

amongst other stakeholders. The 10th version was submitted to University of Cape Coast, and

the 11th, to the NAB for accreditation. The 12 was worked on by the teaching team at their

training workshop use in the 2015/16 academic year.

One major and challenging task was recruiting the right teaching team. It was essential to find

the right people, who could work together as well as deliver the content. The mode of teaching

recommended was team teaching, which does not come easily to a lot of higher education

teachers. Unfortunately, the Design faculty who was part of the development team left the

university. This required that, a new Design faculty be recruited to help with content

development. In all, three Design faculty, two entrepreneurship faculty, six FIs and eight student

coaches were recruited to form the team. This was a daunting task for the Human Resource

Manager and her team, as well as the BA HOD and the FDE Coordinator. With 225 students

expected, it was decided that, there would be six cohorts of approximately 38 students in each

cohort. For the teaching team, one design faculty and one entrepreneurship faculty will be

paired, and with the assistance of two FIs, be in charge of two cohorts. It was also decided that,

the team will meet every three weeks to plan for the next three weeks to ensure that all students

were getting the same experience.

Feedback from stakeholders, was key. Examples is as observed by Volkmann (2009), demand

for entrepreneurship education is driven by students who are keen to do a course in business

planning and creating start-ups. The team therefore embarked on workshops, seminars and

conversations to seek feedback to enable it develop a course that is appropriate for all

stakeholders. There was a session with Ashesi students, cross-section of faculty, the Academic

council, and staff members including the Office of Students and Community Affairs as the

course would require the support of many staff offices. There was a visit to Babson College,

Northeastern University, and Olin College of Engineering all in Massachusetts, to do a seminar

(at Babson), and interact with students, faculty and administrators, in an effort to learn lessons

from them and to take feedback. Half of the visit was spent at Babson because they run a similar

course called Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship

(http://www.babson.edu/Academics/undergraduate/core-experiences/fme/Pages/default.aspx).

http://www.babson.edu/Academics/undergraduate/core-experiences/fme/Pages/default.aspx


4.4 Meeting obligations and taking off!

In order for the course to take off, approval from the Academic Programmes Committee (APC)

of Ashesi, and accreditation from the University of Cape Coast (UCC), to which Ashesi is

affiliated, and the National Accreditation Board (NAB), was required. The NAB is the national

institution responsible for ensuring that all programmes and courses taught at accredited

universities meet the required criteria. No course can be taught as part of any programme without

their approval.

For the approval, the team had to present the course, as has been designed and planned, to the

APC. The presentation was done on the 1st of December, 2014. After a reasonable and thorough

discussion and probe, the APC approved the course with a few recommendations. The

presentation covered the course schedule, the syllabus and content, assignments and

assessments, reading sources, faculty-cohort structure, the team teaching, and logistics such as

space requirements, administrative logistics and the Ashesi Enterprise Fund to support the

businesses. This was the first win for the team. The team scheduled another feedback session

with the APC and Academic Council before the external accreditation effort.

Accreditation was obtained by sending the course pack to UCC for review and approval. The

team took the risk of preparing for takeoff ahead of this approval. Preparations meant resources

were being committed to efforts, without a confirmation that the course was accredited to be

taught. After an anxious four-month wait, approval was finally obtained from UCC, with no

revisions to be made. This was a huge success for the team. The course was presented to the

NAB, as part of Ashesi’s Engineering curriculum, which was also starting in September 2015.

FDE was approved alongside Engineering by the NAB.

Preparing to takeoff involved planning logistics, completing all recruitments, purchasing

supplies, getting the library to order books, getting operations to allocate space requirements,

organizing a two-day training workshop for the teaching team and planning the boot camp. With

all the feedback obtained, and engaging content analysis on all the data collected, the team was

able to extract all the requirements needed. The teaching team, as detailed, was recruited, and

FIs recruited from the Capstone Entrepreneurship class as they had gone through an extensive

year-long entrepreneurial education with the same pedagogy and similar content, as well as

taken a design course earlier in their study at Ashesi. The BA Department Coordinator, remained

the administrator to assist the FDE Coordinator in coordinating the entire course. The two-day

workshop aimed at teaching the team about team teaching, to explain the course and its

pedagogy and content to them, and to solicit their feedback to ensure they could deliver a

successful first FDE cohort.

The climax of the development process was a course launch, the half-day boot camp, dubbed

the FDE Problem Festival. The OSCA made this part of the freshman orientation process, and

was held on the Saturday after orientation. The entire Ashesi community was invited. The aim

of the launch was to get students excited about the course, to communicate this milestone in the

life of the university to the entire community, and to celebrate what has, a year after running,

become one of the flagship courses of Ashesi University College. History was made on that day,

the project team was satisfied, all the stakeholders were satisfied, the students were expectant.

The project was closed.


5.0 Lessons being shared

The team has learnt a lot and has grown through this experience. Under bulleted, are lesson

points that the team will like to communicate through this publication:

1. It is essential to have executive buy-in. It was a great and manageable experience for the

teams because the executive was thinking along the same lines. Key is to know the mission

and strategy of your institution, and be sure your projects, fall in line with it.

2. Have a clear strategy, with a clear plan that will aid in achieving the strategy. This does not

only serve as a guide, but also as a communication tool to convince your executive.

3. It is essential to build the right team with the right expertise and experience, to deliver on

the goals to be achieved. Additionally, this team will need to use multiple sources of

communication to ensure that all members are updated, and they are able to work effectively

and efficiently. They should understand that, the initiative is bigger than any one of them,

and should be committed to working around the clock.

4. It is essential for the development team, as well as the teaching team of such complex

courses, to be taught team development so that they can appreciate as their teams go through

the stages. Additionally, the teaching team should not be employed in a rush. Focus should

be on fit, and capacity building efforts employed to make up for any lapses.

5. Such achievements are possible in environments that have a conducive collegiate culture.

Example, even though the HOD of the Arts and Sciences Department knew that this project

would be a huge achievement and addition to her portfolio if successful, she realized that it

was out of her scope, she handed it over to the HOD of BA. Also, the HOD of Computer

Science was happy to ‘sacrifice’ one of his courses to allow FDE to happen. Such

selflessness and focus on the main goal of the university, is highly essential.

6. Though project management tools and techniques were adopted in this project, the team

risked failure by not being as committed and hard working in the first year. Though the first

cohort of FDE has ended, and its objectives have been met, it is clear now that, if the team

had maintained their momentum, they would have chalked even better success.

7. The importance of feedback cannot be over emphasized. The team members, especially the

team lead, should be one who can take a lot of feedback. This is a trait essential for course

development as a lot of feedback is essential for quality purposes. It is important to identify

people who are doing what you are trying to do, and learn as much from them as possible.

8. Finally, do not start preparing for courses you do not have accreditation for. Plan out a

schedule that gives you ample time to secure accreditation, so all the obligatory requirements

are met.

6.0 Conclusions

For a liberal arts college, set up to train the next generation of ethical entrepreneurial leaders,

intentionally promoting entrepreneurial education in the right manner, by engaging Fink

(2013)’s situational factors, and ensuring that the pedagogy promoted the structure

recommended by Volkmann, (2009), is an advantage. Thorough strategizing, and following its

quality procedures, it successfully developed, in two years, a world class course, worthy of

emulation across the continent and beyond, if the continent intends to train the youth to take

advantage of all the opportunities it will present them. By tasking its own committed and

experienced faculty, and with the community providing the necessary support, surmounting this

herculean task was made possible by a team of three faculty and one staff member.

As academics, it is usually difficult to take feedback, especially when designing courses. The

key lesson learnt from this experience is that, consultations and feedback, from all stakeholders,

especially students, cannot be over emphasized. With the right executive support, which can be

gained from ensuring alignment with broader university objectives, the right approach to


entrepreneurial education can be adopted. Though this approach is resource intensive, it is

worthwhile. Universities who do not have the capacity nor the will to educate entrepreneurs

properly, should desist from doing it as they end up not equipping the students with the right

skills, and the wrong impressions are created, or they end up with some very bad experiences

which kills their dreams as reported by Pittaway and Cope (2007). A research will be kicked off

to measure the impact of FDE on the University and its students to be shared in future

publications.

References

Project Management Institute (2013) A guide to the project management body of knowledge:

(PMBOK® guide). Newtown Square, PA: PMI.

Acs, Z. J., & C. Armington. 2006. Entrepreneurship, Geography, and American Economic

Growth. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Birch, D. (1979). The Job Generation Process. Cambridge, MA: MIT Program on

Neighborhood and Regional Change.

De Mel, S., McKenzie, D., & Woodruff, C. (2009) Are Women More Credit Constrained?

Experimental Evidence and Microenterprise Returns, American Economic Journal:

Applied Economics, 1 (3), 1-32

Dzisi, S (2014) ‘Entrepreneurship Education: Towards an Innovative Approach’, Journal of

Education and Practice 5 (20) 154-164

Drucker, P.F. (1985). Innovation and Entrepreneurship. New York: Harper & Row.

European Commission Final Report of The Expert Group-(2008). Entrepreneurship in higher

education, especially within non-business studies. Brussels

Fink, L. (2013). Creating Significant Learning Experience: An Integrated Approach to

Designing College Course. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fritsch, M. (2004). Entrepreneurship, Entry and Performance of New Business Compared in

Two Growth Regimes: East and West Germany. Journal of Evolutionary Economics 14:

525–42.

Hegarty, C. (2006). It’s Not an Exact Science: Teaching Entrepreneurship in Northern Ireland.

Education + Training 48 (5): 322–35.

Kigotho (2014) World Bank calls for more entrepreneurship Education. Retrieved May 2016

from: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20140704081803607.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and

Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Kuratko, D. F. (2005). The emergence of entrepreneurship education: Development, trends, and

challenges. Entrepreneurship theory and practice 29(5), 577-598

McKernan, S. M. 2002. The Impact of Microcredit Programs on Self-Employment Profit: Do

Non-Credit Program Aspects Matter? The Review of Economics and Statistics 84 (1):

93–115.

Mason, C. (2011). Entrepreneurship Education and Research: Emerging Trends and Concerns.

Journal of Global Entrepreneurship, 1(1), 13-25.

Oakley, R., Mukhtar, S. M., & Kipling, M. (2002). Student perspectives on entrepreneurship:

observations of their propensity of entrepreneurial behaviour. International Journal of

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 2 (4,5), 308–322.

African Economic Outlook. (2015). Who are the unemployed, discouraged & inactive youth in

Africa. www.africaneconomicoutlook.org

Pittaway, L. & Cope, J. (2007) ‘Entrepreneurship Education: As Systematic Review of the

Evidence’, International Small Business Journal 25 (5): 479-510

Politis, D. 2005. The Process of Entrepreneurial Learning: Conceptual Framework.


Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 29 (4): 399–424.

Rae, D. 1997. Teaching Entrepreneurship in Asia: Impact of a pedagogical Innovation.

Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Change 6 (3): 193–227

Robb, A., Valerio, A., & Parton, B. 2014. Entrepreneurship Education and Training: insights

from Ghana, Kenya, and Mozambique. Washington, DC : World Bank Group.

Schramm, C., and R. Litan. 2009. Up from Poverty. Real Clear Markets. Retrieved August 30,

2013, from http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/05/up_from_poverty.html

Solomon, G. T., Duffy, S., & Tarabishy, A. (2002). The state of entrepreneurship education in

the United States: A nationwide survey and analysis. International Journal of

Entrepreneurship Education, 1(1), 65-86.

Volkmann, C. (2009). Entrepreneurship in Higher Education In C. Volkmann, K. E. Wilson, S.

Mariotti, D. Rabuzzi, S Vyakarnam, and A. Sepulveda (Eds.) Educating the Next Wave

of Entrepreneurs: Unlocking Entrepreneurial Capabilities to Meet the Global

Challenges of the 21st Century Cologny/Geneva: World Economic Forum