Assessing the Impact of Education: Are We Moving the Needle? How Would We Know?

(and what does all this really mean?)

Norris KruegerEntrepreneurship Northwest@entrep_thinking ; norris.krueger[at]gmail.com

Sturgeon’s Law?

• Do you want to be:

• Above-average?

• Top 10%?

• Top 1%?• Are you sure? [“stand up”]

Assessing Impact

• What are we looking for?– Show that something changed?– Something positive? – Or actual, useful feedback on our performance?– (hint: this is what the best programs do)– (and in fact, assessment is part of course design)

What do the best programs do?

• What does anyone do???

• Usual suspects? (What do YOU do?)

What could we do?

• Outputs?• Throughputs?

• Behaviors (ours and theirs)• Cognitive or “non-cognitive”

– Knowledge; Skills– Life skills/attributes

• DEEP cognitive change?

But…..

• What IS the “entrepreneurial mindset”?

• How would we know if it is changing?

Sorry… there’s homework

• For now…

• When you think about the entrepreneurial mindset – not skills, not info… Think DEEPER. How would you know someone had a more expert mindset?

• What is different specifically?

Copernican Revolution(s)?

• Converging today….

How do humans actually learn important stuff?

Practitioners leading the way

Online/blended tools

Moving from Novice to Expert

(don’t you want to create experts?)

Assessment!

Experts’ Obsessions

• Obsess over developing a truly entrepreneurial mindset– Not “stuff”– Not “skills”– Business models NOT plans

• Obsess over deep co-immersion with the entrepreneurial community (a/k/a “Ecosystem”)

What drives great things in…

• Startup Weekend, Lean Launchpad, TechStars?• exactly these twin obsessions

• Best technology commercialization programs? exactly this

• The most successful entrepreneurial ecosystems? (e.g. Boulder or SV)

• exactly this

• The A++ Entrepreneurship Programs exactly this

What the best programs do…

• 1. Focus on mindset.. but not as buzzword• 2. Connecting students to ecosystem• 3. Connecting ourselves even more deeply• 4. And make connections two-way

• “Engagement” –> Immersion

• Immersion -> CO-immersion!

• ACTION!

• Uh… maybe we should measure these?

Novice ExpertEntrepreneurial

Mindset

Critical Developmental Experiences

Change in WHAT we know (content)

Change in HOW we know it (knowledge structures)

Change in Deep Beliefs

Consider “lean startup”

• Validate biz model… sure, but also..• Change mindset at a deep level

• Startup Weekend, TechStars– Full immersion

• Peer support• Personal reflection

– Co-Immersion with ecosystem• Expert mentors• Ecosystem feedback

– Who & what is guiding all this?– And how do we assess ?

10,000 hours?

WB Yeats

“Learning is not about filling a pail;

it’s about lighting a fire.”

(but where does the spark come from?)

Two Ways to Learn

• Behavioristic• - fill the bucket

• -define the buckets•

• Constructivistic• - light the fire (or fan it!)

• - assume knowledge structures evolve• (often discontinuously)

Learners create their own buckets…

– through…

• personal reflection,• peer mentoring, • expert mentoring• ….based on authentic questions

• “Experience is not what happens to you, it is

what you do with what happens.”

-Epictetus

the best programs…

• Provide multiple CDEs• Make sure learners take away the right lessons• CCL example• Why not for entrepreneurship?

What we are should be doing

• Skills• Knowledge

• Improving Intent

• Mindset• Changing Deep

Beliefs• Novice

Expert

• Improving ACTION

So what IS this “entrepreneurial mindset” anyway??

• Crowdsourced list• Thoughts? Which are the hardest to change?

– (More important for here... what can we measure?)Seeing opportunities, yes, but…• Seeing self as entrepreneur (role identity)• Strategic thinking• Dot-connecting / pattern recognition• Effectual thinking (bricolage, improv)• Optimist (attributional)• Metacognition• Counterfactual thinking• Bias for action (vs. FoF!)• Value creation as sine qua non (Market-pull?)

the “new” role of instructors

MORE homework

• Remember that one change that contributes to a more entrepreneurial mindset – what’s different?

• How would you know if it changed?• How would you measure that?

….and…

• What CDE would YOU give learners the opportunity to make that change?

• And how would you know that learners took away the right lessons?

Accelerating Learning• Problem-Based Learning (“authentic”

questions)

• Two overlapping themes:• IMMERSION – Action before thinking• MENTORING – Learn the right lessons

– Expert mentors [and I do mean expert]– Peer mentors– Or THREE? Supportive ecosystem?– Social infrastructure; cognitive infrastructure– http://bit/ly/EcoSys

…. If you do it right, you will be called….

• A trouble-maker• A bomb-thrower• A boat-rocker• A…. Well, what do they say in your country?

• But NO, you are not. You are a….

•Bildung Brandstifter!!

If you want to get involved

• in projects – research or applied?

• Norris Krueger: – norris.krueger@gmail.com– @entrep_thinking– Facebook– LinkedIn

Immersion/Mentoring

• Chalmers/Gothenburg• NU Singapore• The Foundry (Utah) • TechStars (www.techstars.org)• Startup Weekend

– www.startupweekend.org• Lean Startup

– http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/successful-entrepreneurship-1

Norris Krueger, PhD –

We’re Not Teaching Entrepreneurship (or Shouldn’t Be!)

We Are Growing… Entrepreneurial Brains

More ed psych!

Neergaard, Tanggaard, Krueger & Robinson (2013) Pedagogical Interventions in Entrepreneurship: from behaviourism to existential learning?