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Category: Online Curriculum

Quick Slide: AI Is Your Co-Pilot

Quick Slide: AI Is Your Co-Pilot

Using AI makes some students nervous because they aren’t sure what it can and can’t do. They aren’t sure whether they can use it or how they can use it.

It’s our job to explain it in an engaging way.

Like the prototyping slides, you can use this slide to start a conversation to help your students think about how they can use AI:

AI is a coplit

This sets you up to introduce AI in an approachable way so your students generate more realistic output.

Combine these with the AI Interviewing Simulator or the How AI Thinks exercise or the exercise and your students will discover that…

AI can be a huge help on their journey!

LAST CHANCE!

In spring, if you’d like:

  1. Engaging activities
  2. Skills-based structure and
  3. Easy LMS integration

Get a preview of the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum (ExEC).


What’s Next?

In upcoming posts, we will share exercises to engage your students.

Subscribe here to be the first to get these in your inbox.

Join 15,000+ instructors. Get new exercises via email!


Missed Our Recent Articles?

Whether you are new to our community of entrepreneurship educators, or you’ve been contributing for years, we wanted to give you a list of the posts our community finds most valuable:

  • Pilot Your Purpose. This exercise helps students discover what they’re passionate about and see how learning entrepreneurial skills can turn that passion into their purpose.
  • 2021 Top Lesson Plans. Here is the list of our 2021 top entrepreneurship exercises and lesson plans based on feedback from our fast-growing community of thousands of entrepreneurship instructors.
  • “The best class I’ve taken!”  We all want a Dead Poets Society moment in our entrepreneurship class. One professor using the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum got hers!
  • Teaching Customer Interviewing. This card and the online game is a powerful way to teach students the importance of customer interviewing, and the right questions to ask.
Improved: Pilot Your Purpose v2

Improved: Pilot Your Purpose v2

Not every student dreams of becoming an entrepreneur but…
Every student yearns to find their purpose.

Regardless of their entrepreneurial ambitions, helping students define their purpose will give them a reason to learn entrepreneurial skills. Whether they want to help refugees find jobs or help student-athletes avoid injuries, helping students discover their passions is key to keeping them engaged.

What’s Your Purpose?

The original Pilot Your Purpose is extremely popular with students because it helps them identify their interests, skills, passions, and desire for impact.

Teaching Entrepreneurship Pilot Your Purpose Exercise

After completing the exercise, students develop a purpose statement they can “pilot” throughout your course. As a result, your class becomes a way to pursue their purpose.

Integrating Purposeful AI 

Of course, for some students, introspection can be difficult. So we updated the exercise to leverage AI brainstorming prompts to help them discover passions they may not think of on their own:
ChatGPT prompt to help students generate ideas they may be passionate about
 
Note: if you or your students don’t have much experience with AI in the classroom, or you’d like to provide them a functional understanding of how it works, check out our Birds & Bees of Artificial Intelligence exercise.

Celebrate Their Purpose

Several more steps are outlined in the lesson plan below, but once students have identified a potential purpose, give them a chance to celebrate what excites them and have them create groups of 2 – 3 students and invite them to share with one another.

Pilot Your PurposeThen ask students to share their purpose with you by either:

  • Sharing their slide deck with you
  • Presenting their purpose to the class
  • Recording a video presenting and posting it on the class discussion board

Learning about what motivates your students will provide you with insight to help you address their needs, and will naturally increase engagement.

Connect it to Your Course

We use this exercise as the first lesson in our comprehensive entrepreneurship curriculum and strategically revisit it throughout the course. That helps make entrepreneurship skills personally relevant to students, regardless of their desire to “become an entrepreneur.”

By making your class about their purpose, whether or not they want to be entrepreneurs…

Your students have a reason to learn entrepreneurial skills.

Get the New “Pilot Your Purpose” Lesson Plan

We’ve created a detailed lesson plan for the “Pilot Your Purpose” exercise to walk you and your students through the process step-by-step.

Get the Lesson Plan

 

It’s free for any/all entrepreneurship teachers. Please feel free to share it.


Coming Soon…

We will be sharing more engaging exercises like this one!

Subscribe here to get lesson plans delivered in your inbox.

Join 15,000+ instructors. Get new exercises via email!

 

AI Interviewing Simulator

AI Interviewing Simulator

Students are reporting more social anxiety than ever.

This Fall, there’s a tool that can help…

New: AI Interviewing Simulator

The key to helping students feel more comfortable interviewing customers is practice.

The new AI Interviewing Simulator helps students practice their interviewing skills as many times as they need to.

Here’s how it works:


Step 1: Students describe a customer they want to interview…

Step 2: They ask interview questions out loud…

Step 3: The AI verbally responds to them…

(Bonus) Step 4: After asking all of their questions, the students get feedback on how how to improve their interviews…

Watch the Full AI Interviewing Simulator Demo

AI Interviewing Simulator for Entrepreneurship Educators


2 Ways Your Students Can Use the AI Interviewing Simulator

Option #1

Use the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum

ExEC provides 30+ engaging lessons you can use inside and outside your class.

Now ExEC includes the AI Interviewing Simulator, at no additional charge.


Option #2

Use just the ExEC Customer Interviewing Module

You can now integrate ExEC’s customer interviewing lessons into your course without having to adopt the entire curriculum. You’ll get exercises to teach:

  • Who to interview
  • What to ask during an interview
  • How to analyze interviews
  • And of course, your students will get full access to the new AI Interview simulator

All without you having to redesign your course.

Your students will get access to everything in ExEC, for life, and for less than the cost of a textbook.


Click Here to Chat About Either Option

Since so many students are experiencing social anxiety and are reluctant to talk to customers, we’re super excited about this new approach!


Engage Your Students With A Structured Experiential Curriculum

ExEC is an award-winning, peer-reviewed, experiential curriculum that engages students in building entrepreneurial skills.

Try ExEC this Fall and transform your and your students’ experience.

Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum Logo


What’s Next?

In upcoming posts, we will share more engaging resources we are developing for entrepreneurship educators to transform their classrooms!

Subscribe here to be the first to get these resources delivered to your inbox!

Join 15,000+ instructors. Get new exercises via email!

Business Plans vs Business Models/Canvases: Data from Entrepreneurship Classes

Business Plans vs Business Models/Canvases: Data from Entrepreneurship Classes

Why do many folks teach business plans?

From our research . . .

It’s not because they think the business plans are the best tool for building a business.

We asked the Teaching Entrepreneurship community what tools they teach and many of the instructors we surveyed teach business plans because it’s a course requirement or because they believe it’s “standard practice” outside academia.

Our research appears to contradict the notion that business plans are standard practice as a majority (57%) of instructors outside academia don’t teach business plans at all.

In fact, across the nearly 300 instructors we surveyed, only 8% teach the business plan exclusively.

Compare that to the 88% of instructors who teach one of the “canvases” (e.g. Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and/or Value Proposition Canvas) and it’s clear business plans are no longer the de facto standard.

The most popular tools to teach entrepreneurship

Why Do Teachers Love the Business Plan?

The few respondents teaching only the business plan cited many reasons for preferring this tool. The most commons reasons are:

  • It is a comprehensive tool
  • It is necessary for some funding sources like bank loans
  • It is required by standards in the respondent’s particular context

But the vast majority of teachers don’t feel that way – across all teacher populations we surveyed (K-12 and higher ed, academic and non-academic, from the US and abroad), only 8% teach only the business plan

For instructors and course coordinators who still teach the business plan:

  • Requirements that business plans be taught because they are seen as a standard entrepreneurial practice should be reconsidered.
  • While some instructors see benefits in teaching business plans, and they may be important to teach in some circumstances, they are taught by a minority of instructors both inside and outside academia and should no longer be considered the de facto standard for describing businesses.

What Entrepreneurship Tools Do Teachers Use?

“Canvases” (Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and/or Value Proposition Canvas) have replaced the business plan as the most popular teaching tool.

As we mentioned earlier, 88% of instructors we surveyed teach with some version of a Canvas, and 50% teach the Business Model Canvas. 

Why Do Teachers Love the Canvas?

Our respondents cited many reasons for preferring the Business Model Canvas. The most common reasons are:

  • It is simple and user friendly. Specifically, some teachers noted the BMC is a way to engage non-business students that is not intimidating.
  • It forces students to focus on customer development and experimentation as they pursue product-market fit.
  • It is the dominant tool used in “the real world.”

Because of the dominance of the BMC in entrepreneurship education, we engaged Dr. Alexander Osterwalder in a series of posts to share how he teaches this tool. 

How Do The Entrepreneurship Tools You Use Compare To Your Peers?

  • Nearly 80% of K-12 teachers reported using a canvas tool to teach entrepreneurship, while almost 50% reported using a business plan.
  • Nearly 90% of academic teachers reported using a canvas tool to teach entrepreneurship, while almost 50% reported using a business plan.
  • Nearly 90% of US-based teachers reported using a canvas tool to teach entrepreneurship, while almost 50% reported using a business plan.

Other Popular Entrepreneurship Education Tools

AI Tools

To see the full list of additional teaching tools, please enter your email below.

In future posts we will share more about our upcoming TeachingEntrepreneurship.org Summer Summit and about tools and methods to increase student engagement.

Subscribe here to get info delivered in your inbox.

Join 15,000+ instructors. Get new exercises via email!

 

Teaching Entrepreneurship AI Summit Summer 2023

Teaching Entrepreneurship AI Summit Summer 2023


The Teaching Entrepreneurship Summit is back with . . .

4 AI Workshops for Educators!

With new AI tools coming out every day, it’s hard to know which ones are useful for teaching.

In this special AI summit, you’ll:

  • Get up to speed on AI in education
  • Get several fun exercises to show your students the power of AI
  • Discover how to avoid AI plagiarism
  • Learn how AI can save you endless time (e.g. faster assessment)

Register Here


Learn Best Practices For Leveraging AI

The Teaching Entrepreneurship Summit will help you make the most of AI.

Register now so you don’t miss it!

Each session will run from 1:00 – 2:30 pm Eastern on their respective days but if you can’t join us live, recordings are available for purchase.


Tuesday, May 9th

AI Demystified: A Guide for Entrepreneurship Educators

Exercises to introduce your students (and yourself) to AI:

  • What are the best AI tools for entrepreneurship classes?
  • How can AI improve students’ business ideas?
  • How can AI make assessment faster?
  • How do you mitigate concerns about AI in the classroom?

Tuesday, May 16th

Using AI to Teach Customer Interviewing

The pandemic only exacerbated students’ customer interviewing anxiety.

In this session you’ll learn AI-powered exercises to help your students:

  • Find the right customers to interview
  • Learn the best questions to ask
  • Practice customer interviews with an AI “chat coach”

. . . all of which will build their interviewing confidence!


Tuesday, May 23rd

Teaching AI-Enabled Financial Modeling

Blow your students’ minds when you show them how easy it is to make robust financial models with the help of AI.

During this workshop you’ll get exercises to help your students:

  • Understand financial concepts
  • Develop accurate financial models
  • Learn how to validate those models in the real world

Tuesday, May 30th

AI Tools to Build Better MVPs 

Your students will be able to test demand for their products and services faster than ever with AI tools to help them:

  • Launch professional MVPs in minutes (no coding required)
  • Write amazing marketing copy
  • Generate powerful imagery for their MVPs, ads, and videos (no design experience required)

Register Here


Early Bird Tickets Available

We know budgets are tight right now so we’re offering a “Live Access Only” ticket free of charge.

Plus: Full Access tickets, which include recordings, slides, and a certificate of participation are $100 off before April 28th.

BONUS: We’re a team of experienced engineers, educators, and entrepreneurs with decades of combined experience. We know AI can be intimidating, so we’ve done the work sifting through what’s out there and what’s worth it.

Exclusive to Full Access ticket holders, join us for an “Ask Us Anything” session where we’ll help you tackle any challenge you have in your entrepreneurship class – AI-related or otherwise.

Register here so you don’t miss the AI Summer 2023 Summit!

Register Here

Your Day 1 Problem

Your Day 1 Problem

Students’ eyes glaze over when they read the syllabus.

How we can engage students and start teaching them entrepreneurship skills from the moment they walk into our classes?

Jay Markiewicz from Virginia Commonwealth University developed a novel way to start your semester that almost guarantees students will WANT to come back!

Step 1: Problem Definition and Customer Discovery

It’s the first day of class. We want to be anti-boring.

We want to put students in the middle of an engaging experience right away.

And even better, we want the engagement to be instructive.

By asking the question below, the moment is instantly relevant because students are experiencing it in real time. Students begin by using Post-it notes to answer this question

What are the challenges and concerns students face on day one of a new course?

Surprised and intrigued by the question, your students write down their answers on Post-It notes you’ve left on their desks before class started.

Then you tell your students to text their friends and ask them the same question. 

Surprised again (this time by being instructed to text during class) your classroom will fill with discussion and energy as students get replies.

Just like that, within the first 5 minutes of your course, your students are practicing the real-world entrepreneurial skill of problem discovery…and loving it.

In small teams of 3-4, students take a moment to meet each other and then collaborate by discussing with each other the challenges/concerns they wrote on their post-it notes. 

In this step, students start identifying problems, and progress into customer discovery, all in the first moments of class!

Step 2: Data Analysis

In this step, teams use their Post-it notes to group similar answers, ranking their top concerns/challenges.

Each team writes their top 2-3 answers on the board to start a list of all of the concerns/challenges students identified.

You can now engage the class in a discussion on the priority “problems” that students have on day one.

Here are some example answers you may see as the top priority”

  • “Getting to know each other. Avoiding day one awkwardness.”
  • “Getting interested in the course. Knowing what I’ll be learning throughout the course.”

In this step, students start analyzing customer discovery data – and you’re not even halfway through your first class!

Step 3: Solution Generation

Now we engage students even deeper, and have a little fun along the way!

They practiced problem definition, customer discovery, and data analysis. The next skill is generating solutions to the problem they just identified.

Ask students to write answers on the Post-it notes to the following question:

If you were me, what solutions would you design for these problems?

Students don’t need to text friends this time. Instead, have them form NEW teams of 3-4 students and go through the same steps as above – meet each other, identify the most common solutions, then debrief with answers grouped on the board or wall.

Step 4: Reflection

The last step of this amazing kickoff experience, included in the lesson plan below, are to have students reflect on the question, “How was this activity instructive to us about entrepreneurship?”

This is where students identify, in their own words, the entrepreneurial process – complete with their own ah-hah moments. It’s a really fun way for students to discover the key principles of entrepreneurship….all on the first day of the class!

Click below to….

Get the Full “What’s Your Day 1 Problem?” Lesson Plan

We’ve created a detailed lesson plan for the “What is Your Day 1 Problem?” exercise to walk you and your students through the process step-by-step.

 

It’s free for any/all entrepreneurship teachers. Please feel free to share it.

All we ask is that you leave us some feedback on it in the comments below so we can improve it!


Want More Exercises Like This?

ExEC is a structured collection of experiential exercises that teach students entrepreneurial skills regardless of their relationship to entrepreneurship.

As an less expensive alternative to a textbook, ExEC provides students lifetime access to a wide range of entrepreneurial tools, and provides instructors:

Preview ExEC Now


We will be sharing more engaging exercises like this one!

Subscribe here to get lesson plans delivered in your inbox.

Join 15,000+ instructors. Get new exercises via email!

 

Teaching Entrepreneurship Winter Summit

Teaching Entrepreneurship Winter Summit

Teaching Entrepreneurship Winter Summit 2022


The Teaching Entrepreneurship Winter Summit is back with . . .

2 New Workshops!

You and our community of entrepreneurship educators voted for your favorite workshops, and now they’re happening!

Register Here

Learn Best Practices

The Teaching Entrepreneurship Winter Summit provides you with top-performing exercises and lets you experience these exercises like your students will. Plus, they’re…

Free when you join us live!

Both sessions will run from 1:00 – 2:30 pm Eastern on their respective days but if you can’t join us live, recordings are available for purchase.

Tuesday, December 13th

See It Taught Live: Financial Modeling Showdown

Winter Summit 2022: Financial Modeling Showdown

Watch Dr. Doan Winkel teach his students financial modeling live* using a fun, interactive game that you can use with your students too!

*We’ll live stream cameras from the classroom so you’ll literally see how the lesson is taught.

Tuesday, December 20th

Engagement From the First Day

Winter summit: Engagement From Day One

Use this lesson to get your students to think like entrepreneurs from the first day of class. 

In collaboration with Jay Markiewicz from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Register Here

Early Bird Tickets Available

We know budgets are tight right now so we’re offering a new “Live Access Only” ticket to the Teaching Entrepreneurship Winter Summit free of charge.

Plus: Full Access tickets, which include recordings and slides, are $100 off before November 30th.

Winter Summit Benefits

Winter Summit map

At our last summit. . .

600+ educators joined us live!

Register here so you don’t miss the Winter Summit!

Register Here

Customer Interviewing: Crawl, Walk, Run

Customer Interviewing: Crawl, Walk, Run

Customer interviews make students anxious because they fear approaching strangers.

It’s our job to build their customer interviewing muscle.

Like the Make Entrepreneurship Relevant Slides, you can use these slides to get your students excited about interviewing customers.customer interviewing quick slide If you’d like to lower student anxiety around customer interviews, try this series of experiences:

CRAWL: Learn What To Ask

In your first class on customer interviews, consider using a lesson like the Customer Interviewing Cards to help your students learn:

  • What questions they should ask
  • What questions they shouldn’t ask
  • And, most importantly, why

Once your students have a good sense of what to ask during an interview, they’re ready to . . .

WALK: Interview Classmates

Students should get comfortable interviewing in a low-stakes environment, so have them start by interviewing 2 – 3 of their classmates.

It’s common for students to feel awkward conducting their first interviews. Let them know the awkwardness is normal and that’s why you’re giving them the opportunity to practice. Reassure your students that the more interviews they do, the more comfortable they’ll feel.

Bonus: Having students interview each other means each student gets interviewed as well.
When students get interviewed, they experience how validating it is to have someone listen to their problems.

When students realize that it feels good to be interviewed, they discover they won’t be bothering their interviewees. That insight alone can reduce their anxiety.

Note: The goal of classmate interviews is just to practice interviewing – they shouldn’t be used for real business model validation. Have your students start their classmate interviews off with, “What’s the biggest challenge you have as a student?” and then let the interview flow from there.

Click below to learn how your students can RUN and FLY with their customer interviews!

LAST CHANCE!

This spring if you’d like:

  1. Engaging activities
  2. Skills-based structure and
  3. Easy LMS integration

Get a preview of the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum (ExEC).


What’s Next?

In upcoming posts, we will share more slides, videos, and exercises to engage your students.

Subscribe here to be the first to get these in your inbox.

Join 15,000+ instructors. Get new exercises via email!


Missed Our Recent Articles?

Whether you are new to our community of entrepreneurship educators, or you’ve been contributing for years, we wanted to give you a list of the posts our community finds most valuable:

  • Pilot Your Purpose. This exercise helps students discover what they’re passionate about and see how learning entrepreneurial skills can turn that passion into their purpose.
  • 2021 Top Lesson Plans. Here is the list of our 2021 top entrepreneurship exercises and lesson plans based on feedback from our fast-growing community of thousands of entrepreneurship instructors.
  • “The best class I’ve taken!”  We all want a Dead Poets Society moment in our entrepreneurship class. One professor using the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum got hers!
  • Teaching Customer Interviewing. This card and the online game is a powerful way to teach students the importance of customer interviewing, and the right questions to ask.
Quick Slide: Make Entrepreneurship Relevant

Quick Slide: Make Entrepreneurship Relevant

With the first day of class approaching, here’s a slide to make your entrepreneurship course more relevant.

The more relevant your course is, the more engagement you’ll get.

Make Entrepreneurship Relevant quick slide

You can tell students that whether or not they ever become entrepreneurs, in your class they’ll learn how to…

Find problems worth solving, and solutions worth building.

Solving valuable problems is the key to success in every career path which is why everyone – from bus mechanics to business moguls – benefits from learning entrepreneurial skills.

Get our newest quick slide to engage your students on day one:


What’s Next?

In upcoming posts, we will share exercises to engage your students.

Subscribe here to be the first to get these in your inbox.

Join 15,000+ instructors. Get new exercises via email!


Missed Our Recent Articles?

Whether you are new to our community of entrepreneurship educators, or you’ve been contributing for years, we wanted to give you a list of the posts our community finds most valuable:

  • Videos to Improve Student Presentations. Here are videos to teach students to deliver presentations that make their audience feel something.
  • How to Grow a Top 50 Entrepreneurship Program. Learn 5 concrete steps you can take to grow your entrepreneurship program, as shared by leaders to Top 50 programs.
  • Marketing MVPs. In this experiential exercise, students launch real ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram to test demand for their MVPs
  • 2021 Top Lesson Plans. Here is the list of our 2021 top entrepreneurship exercises and lesson plans based on feedback from our fast-growing community of thousands of entrepreneurship instructors.
The Best Curriculum Yet

The Best Curriculum Yet

If you’re teaching entrepreneurship in the fall . . .

The best version of ExEC is available now!

See why more than 200 colleges and universities will use ExEC this year: get your preview here.

Easy LMS Integration

No more fighting with your LMS!Whether you’re on Canvas, D2L, Blackboard, or Moodle, you can have a custom ExEC course uploaded in less than 5 minutes.

And with ExEC you get . . .

ExEC LMS Integration

. . . all of which you can use to customize your course.

Improve Team Collaboration

If you want to increase team engagement (while reducing friction), ExEC now enables students to work together on assignments.

ExEC Team Collaboration

Whether your students are across the table, or across the world from one another, ExEC allows them to collaborate like working professionals.

Engaging Simulations

As always, ExEC uses 100% experiential learning to teach students entrepreneurial skills.

ExEC Simulation

Save Your Students Money

ExEC has always been less expensive than textbooks and even with new functionality and more exercises, ExEC remains the same price as always. Plus, students get lifetime access and free upgrades with a one-time payment.

If you’d like to engage your students with a fun, structured experience in the Fall, check out the award-winning Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum!

Preview ExEC Now


What’s Next?

In upcoming posts, we will share exercises to engage your students.

Subscribe here to be the first to get these in your inbox.

Join 15,000+ instructors. Get new exercises via email!


Missed Our Recent Articles?

Whether you are new to our community of entrepreneurship educators, or you’ve been contributing for years, we wanted to give you a list of the posts our community finds most valuable:

  • Videos to Improve Student Presentations. Here are videos to teach students to deliver presentations that make their audience feel something.
  • How to Grow a Top 50 Entrepreneurship Program. Learn 5 concrete steps you can take to grow your entrepreneurship program, as shared by leaders to Top 50 programs.
  • Marketing MVPs. In this experiential exercise, students launch real ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram to test demand for their MVPs
  • 2021 Top Lesson Plans. Here is the list of our 2021 top entrepreneurship exercises and lesson plans based on feedback from our fast-growing community of thousands of entrepreneurship instructors.