Taking Entrepreneurship Teaching Beyond the Classroom
Entrepreneurship is hard to learn from lectures and textbooks alone. Students understand it better when they see how real businesses start, struggle and adapt. Field assignments such as founder interviews and retail store studies give them that contact. In this blog, we'll look at why these assignments work, how to design them, and how to assess what students learn.
Why Field Assignments Work:
- Students see how real people make decisions with limited money, time and information, which is at the heart of entrepreneurship.
- They connect course concepts, such as customer segments, value propositions and business models, to businesses they have seen for themselves.
- They build practical skills in communication, observation, analysis and professional conduct.
Founder Interviews:
- Ask students to identify a local founder or small business owner and prepare questions in advance. Useful topics include where the idea came from, how they found their first customers, how they funded the business, what went wrong, and what they changed along the way.
- Provide a simple interview guide and brief students on ethics: ask for consent, ask permission before recording, and agree how the founder's name and business details will be used.
- Have students write a reflective report that links what they heard to the concepts covered in class.
Retail Store Studies:
- Ask students to study a store: its location, layout, product range, pricing, customer flow, service and nearby competitors.
- Remind them to ask the store manager for permission before observing in detail, speaking to staff or taking photographs.
- Have them analyse the store using a framework such as SWOT or the Business Model Canvas and suggest realistic improvements.
Designing the Assignment:
- Set clear learning objectives, deliverables and deadlines from the start.
- Decide whether students will work individually or in groups, and brief them on professional behaviour when contacting businesses.
- Keep a list of possible contacts for students who struggle to find a founder or store on their own.
Assessing the Work:
- Use a rubric that covers the quality of the information gathered, the use of course concepts, the depth of analysis, reflection and presentation.
- Include short class presentations so that students learn from each other's businesses as well as their own.
Common Challenges:
- Access can be difficult, especially for students without local networks. Early deadlines for securing a contact help.
- Quality can vary between groups. Checkpoints, such as submitting interview questions for feedback, keep students on track.
- Encourage students to thank the businesses they study and, where appropriate, share a short summary of their findings with them. This builds goodwill for future classes.
Field assignments bring entrepreneurship to life. Founder interviews show students the human side of starting a business, while retail store studies train them to observe and analyse how a business operates day to day. With clear objectives, ethical guidance and a fair rubric, these assignments can become some of the most memorable learning in an entrepreneurship course.