Tips for Teachers

What is it?

Project-Based Learning is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects. Students work in teams on a project over an extended period of time that engages them in solving a real-world problem or answering a complex question. They demonstrate their knowledge and skills by creating a public product or presentation for a real audience. As a result, students develop deep content knowledge as well as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication skills. Project-Based Learning is more than just "doing a project" and requires critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and various forms of communication.

Note: A similar concept is problem-based learning, which is a more teacher-led and pre-defined approach.

The process typically involves the following steps:

• Launching the projects - an engaging and open task with clear criteria for the final outcome
• Identifying the resources available and needed to develop the project, including the knowledge required
• Providing input and support for students to master the task (scaffolding)
• Break down the process into subtasks (benchmarks),
• Iterating prototypes of the results and providing feedback on the results,
  Presenting the final product

How to use it in the ENDORSE course?

Project-based learning can be applied to a sub-section of the entrepreneurship course, such as situation analysis, target group modelling or pitch preparation.

Alternatively, the whole course can be implemented as project-based learning, with the final outcome being the students' business plans. The process should be divided into relevant benchmarks (subtasks), e.g. situation analysis, business idea, prototype development, etc. These phases would be accompanied by scaffolding activities such as lectures, meetings with experts, workshops, coaching sessions, job shadowing or other forms.

Tips

Let go of Your Teacher Role

For most teachers it is a big challenge to leave their traditional role and let the students lead the process. Therefore, it is important to change your mindset.

Allow students to make mistakes and learn from them. Provide space for honest, meaningful and constructive feedback to facilitate the learning process. The Agile Retrospective Resource Wiki provides tools, such as Retrospective Surgery, that can be used in the reflection process.

Be an Expert and Facilitator

Good experts listen and provide answers to their clients' problems. Bad experts are too eager to offer their expertise - whether asked or not. As John Milton says in The Devil's Advocate:

"The worst vice is advice."

You can formalise the process by offering office hours where you are available to answer students' questions. Such an approach will have the added value of developing students' skills in identifying problems and formulating them into meaningful questions. You can further sharpen this process by limiting the number of questions teams can raise in each session.

It is a challenge for project groups to organise their work effectively. Therefore, it is helpful to address not only aspects related to the content of the task, but also the processes by which the teams want to organise their work, including roles, responsibilities, decision-making processes, conflict resolution, etc., in the induction process, when the students start planning their work. These aspects should then be addressed in the reflection phases, e.g. teams could use the After Action Review method to improve their effectiveness.

Resources

PBLWorks offers a free toolkit (you need to register) for using project-based learning in business planning. The process is divided into 10 steps and the toolkit provides detailed tips and resources for each step.

1. Identify the learning goals you will teach and assess through students developing business plans.
2. Determine what type of business plans students will create.
3. Launch the project by sparking students’ interest and sharing the driving question.
4. Activate students’ prior knowledge of business plans.
5. Analyse exemplars with students.
6. Have students document their learning and capture ideas for their business plans.
7. Support students as they plan and draft their business plans.
8. Have students write their business plans (and develop their pitches).
9. Have students present their business plans.
10. Reflect and celebrate!

Here are some other useful websites to get you started:

• Harvard Graduate School of Education' website Instructional Moves offers comprehensive information on project-based learning, including explanatory videos, links to research and resources.
• Magnify Learning is offers clear and applicable explanations, tips and resources on implementing project-based learning (mostly targeting school-level education).
• The Boston University Center for Teaching & Learning provides a good overview and establishes links between project-based learning and design thinking.
• The New Tech Network offers a helpful introduction to project-based learning.

What is it?

Problem-based learning is a teaching method in which students develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter by engaging with real-world problems. In addition to increasing student motivation, the process promotes the development of transversal competences relevant to entrepreneurship, such as critical thinking, problem solving, self-directed knowledge acquisition, teamwork and communication skills. The role of the teacher is to facilitate the students' work and to make the learning outcomes visible.

UConn provides a good summary of the differences between traditional learning and Problem-based learning:

Note: A similar concept is Project-based learning, which is a more student-led and open approach. In project-based learning, students tend to work on open-ended projects with no predetermined solution, whereas in problem-based learning there is usually a specific answer to a question.

The Process

Maastricht University identifies seven steps in the problem-based learning process:

1. Discuss the case and make sure everyone understands the problem
2. Identify the questions that need to be answered to shed light on the case
3. Brainstorm what the group already knows and identify potential solutions
4. Analyse and structure the results of the brainstorming session
5. Formulate learning objectives for the knowledge that is still lacking
6. Do independent study, individually or in smaller groups: read articles or books, follow practicals or attend lectures to gain the required knowledge
7. Discuss the findings

How to use it in the ENDORSE course?

Problem-based learning can be used throughout the Endorse course, for example to

• Gain a deeper understanding of how to use a tool or concept.
• Relate theory to local reality.
• Delve deeper into a specific topic.

A number of initial ideas are included in the course outline. Many more real-world examples can be found in the entrepreneurship literature, for example, Paul Burns' Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

The most important thing is to find an appropriate problem for the students to tackle. It should be relevant to the curriculum content, sufficiently complex (especially if organised as teamwork) and engaging.

Case studies are often a good choice. Mindtools offers a separate article describing this approach in more detail: Case Study-Based Learning.

Thanks to generative AI, it is easy to create cases that are tailored to specific contexts. For example, this is a prompt that could be used with ChatGPT, Gemini or any other AI tool:

Create an invented business model sketch that I can use in a university course for a problem-based learning exercise. It should be based on the idea of a cafe in Ventspils, a small town in Latvia. Base your training material on the business model canvas approach. Include in your output several strengths and weaknesses that can be analysed by the students.

In this section we present approaches to formative and summative evaluation that can be used/adapted to different onsite and online settings and different types of teaching.

Pre- and Post Tests

Tests can be used as a formative assessment tool to monitor student learning and provide ongoing feedback to help students improve.

Pre-tests are used before the introduction of an activity to establish baselines, while post-tests are used afterwards to assess changes. As well as providing a tool for assessing the impact of teaching, the use of pre-tests allows students to engage with the topic and recall what they do and don't know about it. By making connections with their long-term memory, they will be more receptive to the learning content.

Technical solutions

Online quizzes are a user-friendly way to create and administer such tests. Online polling solutions such as Mentometer or PollEverywhere are convenient, but usually require a subscription. Alternatively, you can use Google Forms (How to create a poll in Google Forms). Most online collaboration and communication platforms, such as Zoom, MS Teams or BigBlueButton, now have built-in solutions. If your school uses a course management system such as Moodle, you can use the activities available there. An attractive cross-platform alternative is H5P, which is integrated into many e-learning platforms. H5P offers a variety of tools for engaging with learners that can be easily shared and reused. The examples section on the H5P website gives an overview of the activities available.

Here are three H5P activities that you can use as a template for your own activities.

Question Set

Fill in the Blanks

Drag and Drop

Drag each item into the left or right brain hemisphere.

Generating questions

AI tools make it easy to generate questions. There are several dedicated websites, but in many cases freely available generative AI tools will suffice.

The questions used in the previous Quiz and Fill in the Blanks activities were generated using ChatGPT. The text was taken from Paul Burn's book "Entrepreneurship and Small Business". This was the prompt used:

Analyse the following text and create 10 multiple choice quizzes, each with 4 choices. The target audience is university students enrolled in an entrepreneurship course. In your answer, highlight the correct answer.

Making learning visible

"Activity without reflection is not learning." (John Hattie)

Large parts of the Endorse Entrepreneurship course will usually include group activities and the use of student-centred methodologies that are relevant for the development of transversal skills relevant to entrepreneurship, such as collaboration, creativity, problem solving, etc. When planning these activities, it is important to foresee space and tools for reflection in order to make these intrinsic learning outcomes visible.

Rubrics

Rubrics are a good tool to provide structure in the evaluation of project-based and similar learning methods. A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way ([NCSU](https://teaching-resources.delta.ncsu.edu/rubric_best-practices-examples-templates/)). Rubrics are also very helpful in organising student self-assessment and peer assessment.

PBL Works offers a set of rubric templates for schools that can be easily adapted to tertiary level education. These cover five areas:

• Collaboration
• Critical thinking
• Complex communication
• Self-directed learning
• Creativity

Retrospectives

Retrospectives are deeply embedded in software engineering approaches, such as as agile development. Wikipedia defines retrospectives as a meeting held by the project team at the end of a project or process (often after an iteration) to discuss what was successful about the project or time period covered by the retrospective, what could be improved, and how to incorporate the successes and improvements in future iterations or projects.

Retrospectives should also be used in learner-centred methodologies, such as project-based learning. In the context of the Endorse Entrepreneurship course, its use makes sense as it is a valuable tool to know in entrepreneurship and team management.

The website Agile Retrospective Resource Wiki provides plans, tips & tricks, tools and ideas to help us get the most out of our retrospectives.

Feedback

Feedback is a powerful learning tool, especially, when the process is not limited to the teacher but also includes the students. For the process to be effective, teachers and students need to develop skills in giving and receiving feedback. For example, introducing a set of rules can be very helpful, for example,
Metodes.lv suggests the following principles:

For the person giving feedback:

• Talk about your own feelings and your observations. Say "I..." or "Me...".
• Talk to the person, not about him/her. Say "You...", not "He...".
• Be specific, describe what happened. Do not judge the person. Do not interpret or generalise.
• Offer the opportunity to learn both from positive and negative actions. Be honest.

For the person receiving the feedback:

• Listen and try to understand.

There are many ways to structure the feedback process. The most important is to establish it as an integral and regular part of the training in order to build trust between participants and to develop the necessary skills.

The Endorse entrepreneurship course is designed to be delivered in a variety of settings and ways. The course structure and content are particular way suited for a blended learning approach, which combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with physical classroom practices. Individual learning phases give students more possibilities to absorb relevant entrepreneurship concepts and apply them to their own interests and needs, while the common sessions can be used to clarify concepts, facilitate discussions and exchange of ideas, and provide additional input.

A related concept to consider is the flipped classroom approach that inverts the traditional cycle of content acquisition and application. In a flipped classroom, students gain necessary knowledge before class, and instructors guide students to actively and interactively clarify and apply that knowledge during class. The goal is to facilitate deeper learning, increase student participation, and provide more opportunities for interaction and collaboration, and more feedback for both students and instructors. Entrepreneurship concepts are widely covered online, therefore it is comparatively easy to find resources that complement the core course programme covered in Endorse.

Further you will find some suggestions to make blended learning effective and successful.

The article Unlocking Blended Learning: Strategies, Benefits & Tools published on the appsembler website identifies five best practices:

Establishing Clear Objectives: It’s important to start with a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with blended learning. Are you aiming to increase student engagement, offer a more personalized learning experience, or improve learning outcomes? By establishing clear objectives, you can tailor your blended learning approach to meet your specific goals.

Incorporating Varied Instructional Strategies: In a blended learning environment, it’s crucial to use a mix of instructional strategies. Incorporate lectures, discussions, hands-on activities, group work, and online resources to cater to different learning styles. By varying your instructional strategies, you can create a more engaging and effective learning experience.

Leveraging Technology to Enhance Learning: Technology is a key component of blended learning. Use digital tools to enhance the learning experience, such as multimedia content, interactive quizzes, and online discussion forums. Incorporate technology that aligns with your objectives and supports your instructional strategies. Remember, technology should complement, not replace, face-to-face instruction.

Encouraging Student Autonomy and Accountability: Blended learning offers students greater flexibility and control over their learning. Encourage students to take ownership of their education by setting goals, managing their time, and seeking help when needed. Foster a sense of accountability by setting clear expectations and providing regular feedback.

Continuously Assessing and Improving the Blended Learning Approach: Implementing blended learning is an ongoing process. Continuously assess the effectiveness of your approach by gathering feedback from students, analyzing performance data, and reflecting on your own experiences. Use this information to make adjustments and improvements to your blended learning approach.

The article Blended learning: ten tips on how to implement it into a curriculum in healthcare education offers valuable ideas to overcome barriers and harness the advantages of blended learning effectively. Here is a summary of some of the tips:

Apply the Kern Cycle for Curriculum Development: Utilise the six-step Kern cycle, adapted for online teaching, to plan and implement a blended learning curriculum. Ensure that online and face-to-face phases are closely aligned and that revisions are planned early in the development process. The cycle includes:
1. problem identification,
2. targeted needs assessment,
3. formulating goals and learning objectives,
4. selecting educational strategies,
5. implementation, and
6. evaluation and feedback.

Apply an Instructional Framework for Design: Redesign the entire curriculum using instructional frameworks like the five principles of instruction proposed by Merrill et al. This ensures that both online and face-to-face phases actively engage learners and promote higher-level learning objectives. The five principles include:

1. problem-centeredness with real-world problems,
2. learner activation,
3. demonstration of new knowledge or skills for the learner,
4. application of new knowledge or skills by the learner, and
5. integration with synthesis and reflection.

Involve the Target Group: Engage learners and educators in all stages of curriculum development, including testing and feedback. Consider incorporating learners as content creators to enhance engagement and relevance.

Clarify Incentives and Legal Aspects: Address accreditation concerns and legal issues early in the planning process. Discuss workload calculations, data protection, and copyright considerations to ensure smooth implementation.

Provide a Common Thread: Develop an overarching theme or topic to guide both online and face-to-face activities. This helps students and educators navigate the curriculum and understand its coherence.

Combine and Align Teaching and Assessment Methods: Integrate various teaching and assessment methods to meet learning objectives effectively. Align online and face-to-face activities while considering constructive alignment principles.

Integrate Open Educational Resources (OER): Incorporate existing OERs and online resources to enrich the curriculum. Encourage collaboration and critical reflection on resources to enhance digital literacy skills.

Make Full Use of Evaluation and Feedback Opportunities: Establish an evaluation framework to assess the effectiveness of the blended learning curriculum comprehensively. Use feedback to refine and improve the curriculum continuously.