TY - JOUR

T1 - Experiences from COVID-19 and Emergency Remote Teaching for Entrepreneurship Education in Engineering Programmes

AU - Lambert, Chris

AU - Rennie, Allan

PY - 2021/6/7

Y1 - 2021/6/7

N2 - Education systems and institutions, often historically considered to be resolute, slowmoving entities transformed virtually overnight during the earlier stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating nimbleness in adversity. This paper describes the first-hand experiences of teaching staff and students from a UK university which pivoted to emergency remote teaching for a core second-year module in engineering, focused on entrepreneurship. A range of methods areused including self-reflection, summative, formative, and focus-group student feedback. The paper provides an insight for readers who may be interested in the practical challenges associated with moving from an academic module typically delivered in a face-to-face learning environment accommodating a large student cohort (n = 177), to one that exists entirely in the digital domain.Our results show learning outcomes were fully met despite stark differences in quality of learning environments amongst students. Students reported benefits to remote learning because it offers a blended approach of both asynchronous content and synchronous sessions, with the latter enhancing engagement and providing structure to working weeks. Issues of presence emerged amongst group work: whilst it might be easier to confront some individuals for lack of contribution, it is also easier for those individuals to disengage. There was widespread support for the Microsoft Teams platform amongst students and staff but the former group reported this lacked a social environment in whichrelationships amongst team members could be nurtured informally, such as was experienced via social media.

AB - Education systems and institutions, often historically considered to be resolute, slowmoving entities transformed virtually overnight during the earlier stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating nimbleness in adversity. This paper describes the first-hand experiences of teaching staff and students from a UK university which pivoted to emergency remote teaching for a core second-year module in engineering, focused on entrepreneurship. A range of methods areused including self-reflection, summative, formative, and focus-group student feedback. The paper provides an insight for readers who may be interested in the practical challenges associated with moving from an academic module typically delivered in a face-to-face learning environment accommodating a large student cohort (n = 177), to one that exists entirely in the digital domain.Our results show learning outcomes were fully met despite stark differences in quality of learning environments amongst students. Students reported benefits to remote learning because it offers a blended approach of both asynchronous content and synchronous sessions, with the latter enhancing engagement and providing structure to working weeks. Issues of presence emerged amongst group work: whilst it might be easier to confront some individuals for lack of contribution, it is also easier for those individuals to disengage. There was widespread support for the Microsoft Teams platform amongst students and staff but the former group reported this lacked a social environment in whichrelationships amongst team members could be nurtured informally, such as was experienced via social media.

KW - emergency remote teaching

KW - engineering education

KW - COVID-19

KW - entrepreneurship education

KW - distance learning

KW - online learning

U2 - 10.3390/educsci11060282

DO - 10.3390/educsci11060282

M3 - Journal article

VL - 11

JO - Educational Sciences

JF - Educational Sciences

SN - 2227-7102

M1 - 282

ER -