Group Size
?
1.) Small group (teams of 4-6)
2.) Individual Task
3.) Large Group
4.) Any
Small group (teams of 4-6), Individual Task
Learning Environment
?
1.) Lecture Theatre
2.) Presentation Space
3.) Carousel Tables (small working group)
4.) Any
5.) Outside
6.) Special
Any
QAA Enterprise Theme(s)
?
1.) Creativity and Innovation
2.) Opportunity recognition, creation and evaluation
3.) Decision making supported by critical analysis and judgement
4.) Implementation of ideas through leadership and management
5.) Reflection and Action
6.) Interpersonal Skills
7.) Communication and Strategy
1Creativity and Innovation
2Opportunity recognition‚ creation and evaluation
3Decision making supported by critical analysis and judgement
7Communication and Strategy
Supporting aspiring student entrepreneurs in their entrepreneurial journey.
This case study describes the blended learning approach of the Royal Holloway Enterprise Hub. The Enterprise Hub is an extra-curricular platform that supports students from across College and level of studies in their entrepreneurial journey. We do so by providing workshops, coaching, mentoring, field trips, guest talks and many other activities. This case study will focus on our blended learning approach that we developed in order to support students more effectively during the ideation stage and beyond. This approach is specifically focussed at our non-management students.
In order to better support students and to use their affinity to social media-like platforms, we developed a virtual training tool that uses Slack. Slack allows students to not only consume information at their own speed or in the order they wish but it also allows them to post their own content and interact with other student entrepreneurs. This allowed us to not only provide entrepreneurial training in a more student-centric way but also to foster collaboration amongst student entrepreneurs.
Online Provision:
The Slack platform is divided into multiple channels that students can subscribe to. These are organised along the entrepreneurial process as well as by cross-cutting topics such as marketing, finance or networking. In each channel, we provide students with certain general information about the topics. We provide templates and link to mini explainer videos publicly available on YouTube or other platforms. We further provide students with mini-exercises that they can do on their own such as the “mum test” that very concisely teaches students about the importance of getting feedback from the right person and to test assumptions about customer needs.
In addition to Slack, we use Mural – an interactive multi-user platform that allows us to upload any template. Students can then work on these templates (e.g., business model canvas) in their own virtual room. However, the functionality allows us to see the progress students make and enables us to comment on them synchronously. It further provides student entrepreneurial teams to work together on one virtual template. We provide different templates for different stages of the development. In combination with slack, students are able to message us at any point during their creative process if they would like specific feedback.
Blending offline and online:
As we believe that simply letting students work on their enterprise idea would not provide them the support they need, we developed a blended approach. For instance, a student with a rough idea would come to us and we would explain them the basic idea of understanding your customer and the elements of the business model. We would then introduce and brief them on how to use Mural and how to access additional “how to “guides via Slack. After this initial conversation, students are asked to work on a set of templates on their own. We regularly support them by commenting on their thoughts and approach in the virtual rooms.
Once students have carefully thought about certain aspects of their venture idea, we meet with them again to discuss these in detail, provide feedback and potentially link them with an entrepreneur mentor. Moreover, we then also suggest certain workshops that help the student and fit their needs at that given moment. Where needed, we then also connect them to other professional such as pro-bono copyright or patent lawyers. After this, the process continuous iteratively as long as the student requires support.
Student feedback:
“but once I started using Slack to get in touch with Anica, um, I would get responses like daily. So, um, that was way better for me than using email. And that could just be like, that's like a better source of communication. That would be my main thing.”
“feedback wise would be, can there be a constant communication channel that's available digitally where we're getting consistent? Like, um, communication, because I wasn’t getting that, and I think Slack has become that for me when I needed it.”
Mural
Slack
