With the rapid and intersectional development of business, the related skills have become useful not only for people that seek to build and run their own companies, but also for the general audience. Specifically, the ability to manage teams, motivate participants, calculate the budget, allocate the required resources, build a business plan, and carry out other tasks related directly to the realm of business and entrepreneurship is no longer relegated solely to the specified area (Yeap et al., 2020). Namely, entrepreneurship skills have become a critical requirement for every citizen due to the need to build basic business awareness and be able to develop a viable plan from the further professional and economic development (Bux & Van Vuuren, 2019). For this reason, introducing an entrepreneurship course must be seen as a critical step in supporting people and contributing to the well-being of the global community.
Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to prove the necessity of an entrepreneurship course, as well as determine the core components thereof. Specifically, the opportunities that an entrepreneurship course will provide to general audiences will be outlined. Additionally, the key constituents of an entrepreneurship course in question will be identified, with corresponding justifications for the choices made. Moreover, the limitations of the course and the chances that it will offer to the selected population will be identified to ensure that the opportunities for providing people with entrepreneurship-related skills will be open to the participants. Furthermore, this mixed method study will seek to predict the changes to be observed in the future due to the introduction of educational opportunities concerning the development of entrepreneurship-related skills.
Thus, the main hypothesis for this paper can be formulated in the following way: the introduction of essential components of entrepreneurship, particularly, the principles of budgeting, business planning, resource management, leadership, team building, and the related issues, assists people with non-economic academic background in their professional and financial performance, thus, substantially improving the quality of their lives and the range of opportunities that they can enjoy.
Consequently, the research questions to be answered in the course of this research is as follows:
- What elements of business and economics must be integrated into a corresponding course for increasing people’s entrepreneurship-related literacy so that they could extrapolate newly developed skills into their professional field?
- To which extent do the entrepreneurship course and its specific components contribute to the development of the necessary competencies?
As the questions and hypothesis above demonstrate, the study in question needs to be represented by the mixed research method. Specifically, while proving the hypothesis will require the quantitative analysis, specifically, a comparison of people’s performance before and after the experiment, the research questions suggest collecting qualitative data. Therefore, the mixed research method will be selected.
The variables in thus study include participants’ performance and skills related to managing their financial performance in their target area, the extent of their business literacy, the entrepreneurship course, and the components thereof. Specifically, participants’ performance will be studied as the dependent variable that is expected to change with the introduction of additional variables into the research (Farghaly, 2018). Namely, it is expected that the dependent variable under analysis will increase as the research progresses.
In turn, the entrepreneurship course, its specific components, and the levels of participants’ understanding of the subject matter will serve as the core independent variables that are believed to have a positive effect on the dependent ones. In the course of the study, the participants will be gradually exposed to the independent variables under analysis. Remarkably, it is vital to introduce different approaches to studying the variables in question (Mohajan, 2018). Firstly, and most importantly, the variables under analysis will be related to one another in order to prove the presence of correlation and causation between them. Afterward, the variables in question will be described and compared in order to determine their nature and, thus, draft the components of the course that will help produce the best effect.
The key learning outcomes to be expected of the described study include a more thorough and accurate understanding of the process of teaching and learning business-related concepts, particularly, those associated with entrepreneurship. Specifically, the development of the relevant skills in participants that have not been exposed to business and economics as a research field will be explored to prove that the needed skills can be acquired by any participant. Furthermore, it is expected that the participants will gain an intuitive understanding of entrepreneurship and the associated capabilities in regard to business. Namely, it is assumed that, with the introduction of entrepreneurship courses geared at helping the target audience build the necessary competencies, they will be able to extrapolate the obtained knowledge to acquire additional information, experiences, and competencies that will guide their further learning. In other words, it is assumed that the core subjects introduced in the entrepreneurship course in question will set the participants onto the path to the further discovery of w opportunities and ideas. Thus, learners’ independence will become the key skill to be built throughout the course, increasing the participants’ confidence and their ability to acquire new information to apply it to the required area.
References
Bux, S., & Van Vuuren, J. (2019). The effect of entrepreneurship education programs on the development of self-efficacy, entrepreneurial intention, and predictions for entrepreneurship. Acta Commercii, 19(2), 1-13. Web.
Farghaly, A. (2018). Comparing and contrasting quantitative and qualitative research approaches in education: The peculiar situation of medical education. Education in Medicine Journal, 10(1), 1-9. Web.
Mohajan, H. K. (2018). Qualitative research methodology in social sciences and related subjects. Journal of Economic Development, Environment and People, 7(1), 23-48.
Yeap, S. B., Abdullah, A. G. K., & Thien, L. M. (2020). Lecturers’ commitment to teaching entrepreneurship: do transformational leadership, mindfulness and readiness for change matter? Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 13(1), 164-179. Web.