Comparing Online and Physical Social Entrepreneurship Training: Lessons Learned moving Online

Abstract

With soft skills such as networking, groupwork and team building being key aspects of entrepreneurship education, the Covid-19 pandemic arguably has had a larger impact than on many other subject areas by the need to switch online. Having run a four day, fully immersive Enterprise School for social enterprise off campus for many years, the Covid-19 pandemic saw a need to move online with a danger of these key aspects being lost. By using the more familiar local area, spreading out the time between sessions and increasing the interactions with guest mentors we were able to mitigate for some of these issues. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of moving online with qualitative feedback from students and staff including some unexpected benefits such as improved accessibility for some students.

A Post-Covid comparison of students’ usage of an online learning platform

“…This was a particular challenge for those teaching entrepreneurship where the best learning environment is much more experiential. However, despite the far from ideal rushed nature for most of this challenge, having had time to assess the impact of online Covid teaching (Phillips, 2022), there are benefits of offering elements of online teaching that might help to augment any course and allow students to learn in the most appropriate way for their preferred learning style.…”