Summary: Online Teaching and Entrepreneurship

One of the great concerns about the subject of entrepreneurship is that can it be taught? Entrepreneurship is defined as risk taking activity that results in a new venture. They say the practice of risk taking cannot be taught, but as instructor of Entrepreneurship I say that it can be taught properly if the three domains of learning are involved, the cognitive, affective and psycho-motor.

For me, online teaching provides a good avenue for the instruction of entrepreneurship. Since entrepreneurship requires innovation and creativity, the most suitable approach to encourage this is through the role of a facilitator. Successful entrepreneurs are often drop outs of the traditional educational system. Traditional educational system tends to stifle creativity and innovation with the more emphasis on blind obedience as opposed to enlightened compliance to rules and processes, to hierarchical organizations as opposed to organic organizations that are flexible to change. So it is not surprise that often innovators and change makers choose to abandon traditional educational school in favor of the unknown. However, not all is lost in our educational systems. The focus on outcomes based approach, active learning and social constructivism are factors that encourage and harness the development of entrepreneurship that values creative thinking and innovation. With online platforms that encourage individual and group thinking group collaboration etc. Teaching entrepreneurship is possible. It’s always about the right content, the right teaching approach in addition to technology that determines a successful online class.

Active Learning and “Busyness”

Active learning is defined “The process of having students engage in some activity that forces them to reflect upon ideas and how they are using those ideas. Requiring students to regularly assess their own degree of understanding and skill at handling concepts or problems in a particular discipline. The attainment of knowledge by participating or contributing. The process of keeping students mentally, and often physically, active in their learning through activities that involves them in gathering information, thinking and problem solving.”(Defining Active Learning, By Maryellen Weimer, PhD, February 9, 2011) Now I must admit there are professors who mistake active learning as simply keeping students busy. Because of the emphasis on outcomes based learning, professors tend to bombard students with activities that force them to apply the lessons. I use the word “force” because the ways the lessons are being implemented are “dictated” by the professor. The students are not given the freedom on how to implement the lesson. I must admit, as teacher of financial management and production and operations, I have to set parameters to my students when they apply the lessons in their operations. But what I do not limit is their creativity in meeting their objectives related to the subject. I set the parameters of a gross sales target of X amount and a positive net income, and I will measure this based on accounting rules, but how they reach this is what I give them as freedom. I won’t tell them how to make money, but I will show them and facilitate how they should measure their money. I must admit a number of professors would tell their students this and that, but the students do not understand the relevance of the activity. For example majority of students I encountered know how to compute the breakeven point but do not know how to implement it in their company’s financials or production and operations. They are kept busy being asked to compute so many matters that they don’t know when to use in their company operations. They know how to compute. But do not know when to use it, and why they should use it. An effective active learning activity does not only teach students “how”, but “why” and “when”. The challenge for me as instructor of financial management is to make sure my activities reach “how”, “why” and “when”.

Online Class Reflections The Three Domains of Learning

In the power point Curriculum Training Module Two by Mark Feder, he mentions the three domains of the learning, “cognitive”-the technical aspect of the lesson and “affective” feeling and the third is the “psycho-motor” stage. He explains that in order to learn how to bike, you need all three domains, and this can be applied to teaching a foreign language.  I must admit learning a foreign language has always been a waterloo for me. But I think in my past language classes I only reached the cognitive and psycho-motor stage and have no memory that my teacher helped me in the affective stage. I don’t remember my language teachers giving me words of confidence and motivation, in fact my French language teacher in Miriam even told me that my brother (who was also his student) was  better than me and my Mandarin language teacher was too focused on testing us every week that I decided to drop out of class . This paradigm of the three domains made me understand the role of a facilitator, because as a facilitator you encourage students to learn on their own and practice their cognitive as opposed to a teacher that merely provides the cognitive skills and practice the psycho motor of students. In traditional teaching, the affective stage is greatly overlooked which is an irony, since in the business sector; the role of motivation and encouraging employees is one great factor for a successful work performance and organizational success. For me it’s a very good thing that our higher education unit (HEU) has adopted an out comes based learning approach which emphasized the psychomotor skills of “DOING”, but I hope that it will also adopt an AFFECTIVE approach too since I noticed motivation and encouragement is not yet embedded in the current syllabus that I am adopting as a teacher. But as a teacher, I do make it a point to touch on the affective domain. I encourage and motivate my students because I am aware that in the four functions of management (Planning, influencing, organizing and controlling), motivation and encouragement is in the realm of influencing or leadership.  An organization cannot be effectively managed without the function of influencing, and human behavior studies have shown that encouraging employees and motivating them properly can make or break an organization.

Constructivist Learning Theory: “Learning by Relevance”

I find the theory of constructivist theory very interesting and timely since it helps me explain my teaching method.  Most of my life I am practitioner of business. I have no formal educational training. What I do know is that for students to absorb and understand anything they have to relate it to their personal experience that is why I do a major adjustment when I teach business concepts to college students. The challenge of teaching business in college is simple-how to make business relevant to students who actually don’t make a living? Who don’t feel the necessity to pay their bills?

 I must admit when I was younger, I deplore any subjects with mathematics or accounting. I feel like I’m suffering from mathematical form of dyslexia, until I started running a company. Suddenly, what I would normally deplore learning suddenly became an effortless absorption. Never in a million years, did I imagine myself teaching Financial Management but it actually happened.

It made me realize when I was younger; I did not see Mathematics as a necessity until I started running a firm and we tried to monitor our financials on a regular basis.  When I started teaching in the academe, I made it a point to make college students of business understand the necessity to read and analyze financials. How crucial and dangerous it is to be illiterate in financial management.  I relate it to their personal experiences. I asked them to make their own personal financial statement. How much their lifestyle cost, how much they need to earn and I show them the actually how much employers are willing to pay them based on their life skills. This would make them understand how lucky and privileged they are and why as students of entrepreneurship, they should set up and run their own firms as early as possible to afford their lifestyle. Because for me, the primary reason why students don’t feel the motivation to start their own firms it’s because presently they are not breadwinners.  They have parents who can provide for them. But I explained to my students, that the best age to start a firm is in your 20s since they are still single and they can still run to their parents for help. Once they reach their 30s they usually have their own families and their parents’ starts getting sick or dying. (Retirement savings for the elderly is only for a small portion of the population of the Philippines).

The more the entrepreneurship graduate delays their venture, the more their risk taking tolerance lowers as they age. This is due to the fact as student’s age they are starting their own families and need stability, or their parents are already retired and need care. This would drastically affect a potential entrepreneurs risk taking activity in the long run.  Unless Philippine society makes retirement savings an imperative to all entrepreneurs and employees the cycle of dependent parents will not change.

In summary, I agree with the Constructivist learning theory that it is very essential that learners be able to relate the lesson to their experience, because unless they can relate it to their experience, they won’t remember it in the long run.  In fact the best processing of experience is through a feeling of “necessity”. The best lessons are those lessons that really taught us a hard lesson that impacted us on a personal level.

When God Says No

I always believe in divine connections. When God opens doors for opportunities in a person's life. Like knowing at the right time  the opening for a job, passing an exam one did not study for; or just meeting a person who would trust you with capital etc.

I must admit, it has been a tough time for my company this past two years. Every time i solve one problem, a problem pops up and at an astounding probability. The probability of tragedies striking my company at one period render me to a point of speechless. If i were extremely religious person I would say this is a test of my faith, or if I am one pessimistic person I would say I would have been cursed or punished. Of course another probability is what if this is a "no" from God and I am simply too stubborn to see it. I have always been a take charge person and hates to to give up, but the turn of events and the timing of challenges  is so astounding that makes me one think of a bigger force beyond me. Maybe God has answered my prayers but not in a version I expected to see, or this is  glaring re-direction on my part.Whatever happens, I trust God knows what is good for me.

There was a time I was talking with my Mother about praying novenas again. I reminded her that I grew up watching her pray to Our Lady of Perpetual Help or Nazareno of Quiapo every time she had a major crisis in her life, and noticed since Dad died she stopped doing it. I reminded her how her prayers were coincidentally answered.  How she prayed for a daughter and got me (Though we joked if it was really Mother Mary who sent me...), how she prayed to God that Dad to regain focus and how she prayed to God to have a negative results from a cancer test etc.

I am not a prayerful person but I do know that major breakthroughs in my life were divine connections.I know it was not pure luck, it was a divine hand leading me to where I am. The times i just a got a job or a break without looking for it, or passing an exam that I did not prepare myself for, or meeting a person that helped my company grow. This are not just pure effort on my part but divine connections. I just hope in light of the challenges I am facing, I can understand and see the bigger picture in the future and trust God that he knows what is good for me, much more than I do.

Lessons I learned from Stephen Covey

I was so busy with work, I didn’t notice the news that Stephen Covey died last Monday. Aside from Dale Carnegie, John Maxwell, Joel Osteen and Ayn Rand; he is one of those people who greatly shaped the way I think about life.  He taught the concept of “win-win “in business. In summary it means it’s possible to actually make profit without exploiting anyone. Also he taught the idea of a personal mission and vision statement which I made one for myself in 2002, and has been faithful to it.  He also emphasized the importance of being in tune with one’s conscience, and having values. I will be forever grateful to this man.

Believing in Fiction

When I talk about my faith in God, I am sometimes accused of believing in fiction. Imagine this, an ardent fan of the atheist writer Ayn Rand, talking about God. It’s like a serial junk food junkie trying to promote healthy foods. It doesn’t connect. It doesn’t make sense. It’s simply crazy. But when I think about it, it actually connects. Ayn Rand talks about individual rights, about the right to happiness; and no man should be treated as a sacrificial animal, and here we have positive version of Christianity talking about a man’s right to happiness and need not to sacrifice like Jesus  Christ.  Of course like majority of most Catholics here on earth, I was initially initiated to a form of Catholicism that emphasized so much about penance and sacrifice; one would think God is one powerful sadist. But as I grew up and got acquainted with other Christians (like the born again movement) and a more positive form of Catholicism courtesy of Bo Sanchez, I came to realize that Christianity empowers people to be the best they can be,  and be proud of being humans.

Aside from an encounter towards a more positive form of Christianity courtesy of Joel Osteen and Bo Sanchez; what restored my faith in  the existence of God and  Christianity is the social support network which I find missing in many affiliations I have joined into. When family support is absent or weak, where can individuals run to?  Where can they go?  If your family unit is messed up where do you go? Imagine being terminally ill or suffering financially hardship and your own loved ones and friends abandons you.   Christian groups have support groups for practically   every human tragedy one can think of. 

Before I am accused of being a Christian fundamentalist, let it make clear that I am not down playing other religious faiths.  Right now I am explaining the reasons why after years of being inactive in Christian faith,  my religious conviction got restored, in spite the fact women priesthood and same sex marriage is still  an impossibility within the Catholic church; and reproductive rights is still a controversial issue.  In my own personal tragedy, I come to appreciate the support from Christian individuals that I would normally be skeptical of.  I was impressed by their never ending supply of compassion.

I remember the late President  Cory Aquino. She was a woman of faith and religious conviction. I bet if she didn’t possess the faith and religiosity that she was known for she would have taken the easy route and just leave her husband at time of his incarceration. She could have made her life easier, divorce him and re-marry. But Ninoy Aquino was lucky. She had a wife who has a strong resolve backed by religious conviction. He made a smart choice when he married her.

My father is also pretty lucky to marry my mother. My dad went to rough times in business and became sick for years, yet my mother never left his side and remained faithful. Until his death, she was there by his bed side. My mother was a woman of religious faith, and kept her wedding vows to the end.  I would be a hypocrite not to admit that there are still a few times that I find my mother’s religious viewpoints silly or outdated,   but in the end, I judge her for her actions. She did stay with my Dad through bad and good times even when usual logic would tell her otherwise; and she kept her commitment. From there she taught me the concept of “loyalty” and “commitment” and got my admiration and respect.

In summary, my faith in the existence of God  and Christianity was restored by the positive effects of Christian teachings on people. When people show compassion, when people keep their word, commitments and stick through their loved ones through tough times, I become convinced of a higher power that strengthens people to go against the usual course of self-preservation. It takes great strength of character to stay with loved ones through bad times. I have seen many people get abandoned at times when they are needed  by their loved ones the most, and noticed those who stayed are usually those who are accountable to a higher power.