Frequently Asked Questions about the Entrepreneurial Enterprises course
Answers to FAQs about entrepreneurship courses in general
Q: Is this a "free elective" or BUGE course?
Yes, for students who are enrolled in a program that does not belong to the Division of Business. For students in a Division of Business degree, this is a business elective. This course is taken by students from across the University.
Q: What is really special and different about this course?
This course includes a number of innovations that add value and provide an interesting and relevant learning experience.
- Survey of personal characteristics of entrepreneurs. Students complete an online questionnaire before the start of the course. Each student gets an individual benchmark report showing their responses against the class average, and this report is used in the lecture sessions to clarify constructs relating to the personal characteristics of entrepreneurs
- Team-Based Learning approach. This well-developed approach spreads the assessment load and builds team cohesion and productivity.
- Poster plan presentation and review session. Instead of preparing a long document as the major report, teams produce a plan as two A3 pages that they present to the class. This allows students to get immediate feedback and to learn from the work that other students have done.
Q: What is the fee for this course?
This is a standard 4.5 unit course, as far as fees are concerned.
Q: Who can take this course?
This elective is open to all students from across the university. In 2009 students taking this course were enrolled in 39 different study programs and from all UniSA Divisions and campuses (including Whyalla). These included business, arts, health sciences, engineering, sports management and information technology students.
Q: What are the prerequisites?
You need to have completed any 8 courses (36 units of study) before enrolling in this course. This is a course that you cannot take in your first year of full-time study. The reason for having these prerequisites is that entrepreneurship is a field that draws on knowledge of all aspects of the operation of the business (in particular marketing, human resources management, financial management, strategy), and integrates them in the small-business context. In practice, this means you will find this course easier to handle if you have completed a reasonable number of courses across a range of areas -- ideally, you have completed the Division of Business core courses.
Q: What if I am attending another university?
If you are enrolled in another university and you have space in your degree for an elective course, then you can apply through your own department to take this course as a cross-institutional transfer student. We have a number of people doing this already. You will also need to get the form signed by the course coordinator - you can leave your form at the School of Management office, which is on the ground level of the Elton Mayo Building at the corner of George Street and North Terrace, City West Campus.
Q: What if I don't have room in my degree, or have already completed my degree?
If you do not have room in your degree for an elective, you can apply to attend this course as an audit student, but there is a fee attached. UniSA Campus Central (8302 0511) can provide information about this option and the fees. The HECS fee for this course is identified on the course home page.
Q: Are there any places available in this course - what do I do if a class is full?
The entrepreneurship courses are popular, and some of them are very quickly filled even though they have a large intake. You can always see how many people have enrolled in any course by looking at the class timetable for that course -- you will see the enrolment capacity, and the current enrolment total. In addition, when you go through enrol online, this facility will give you the most current number of places available in a particular class. If the class is full, please do not contact the lecture or the school with a request to be allowed to join the class, as they will not override the enrolment capacity -- please enrol in another class in a different study period.
Q: Is this course offered externally?
We regret that this course is available only face-to-face because of our reliance on the Team-Based Learning method. It is not offered externally or online. Some regional and interstate students take this intensive course by coming to Adelaide for the lecture/seminar sessions (as well as for the written examination). They also need to be very well-organised, and make sure that they communicate frequently with their project team. However, it is important to note that the exam is offered only in Adelaide.
Q: How big will the class be?
At City West, classes are limited to 130 or 140 students.
Q: How can the course content be covered in two weeks?
See the timetable for the course. Teaching is carried out over four half-day sessions and two full-day sessions spread over two weeks. These are followed by a workshop session and a report presentation and review session. In this way, you have the equivalent of five full days to cover and explore the course content, and this is the same as the contact hours for a full semester of lecturers and tutorials.
Q: Why don't workshops appear on the official timetable?
The university system is not really geared to present a simple view of the timetable for an intensive course. Including the optional workshop would make the timetable section of the official home page confusing, and would cause timetable conflicts that prevent students from enrolling. That is why we include the note Important: See timetable details at www.unisa.edu.au/cde/" on the official course timetable page.
Q: How much work does this course involve?
The 'rule of thumb' for business courses is that you spend 2 hours of your own time on assignments, group work, tutorial preparation and self-directed learning for every contact hour. This course is about 40 contact hours (including seminars and workshop sessions). This means that we expect that you will spend about 120 hours of your own time in attending lecture/seminar sessions and workshops, as well as preparing for the exam, working with your team to develop your business idea and writing your team report.
CDE staff have taught this course a number of times, and we have observed that students who are well organised seem to have few problems. Students generally arrange to meet in their teams on a regular basis to plan and coordinate their activities and allocate tasks. They then spend time on their own doing their allocated tasks and own study.
Q. Are course materials provided?
You receive a printed study guide of about 240 pages. This includes copies of lecture presentations and a template for each class exercise. You will also have access to the course web site that includes supplementary readings and templates and instructions for preparing the team report for this course.
Q: Is there a textbook?
A book of readings will be available from Campus Central. These readings include recent and relevant papers in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation, and we will use these during the lecture/seminar sessions. This reflects our teaching approach which is to educate by presenting current thinking in this field, by drawing on research findings as well as materials from a wide range of sources (including academic and business publications). This means that we do not lecture out of a textbook, and we do not necessarily lecture out of the study guide. You will find the text that we used in previous years (Timmons, JA & Spinelli, S 2009, New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century, 8th edn, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, New York, NY) is a valuable reference and will expand on the course materials. The readings and this text will supplement the content that is delivered in the lecture/seminar sessions, as it is just not possible for us to cover all of the relevant material in those sessions. That is why we go to some effort to identify materials that add value to the course and contribute to your learning and education.
Q: Aren’t entrepreneurs born? How can you teach someone to be entrepreneurial?
If you have an entrepreneurial inclination, this course will give you the knowledge and confidence to identify and evaluate a business opportunity, and how to go through the process to develop this opportunity as a business venture. It will help you to be entrepreneurial when the situation arises. It will also give you the knowledge and confidence to join a team (led by an entrepreneur) to set up a new business venture – either as a new business or within an existing organisation.
UniSA's aim is to offer this type of course to students across the whole university as part of a strategy to become an 'enterprise university'. The purpose is to encourage all students to consider starting their own business after they graduate. That is, the course will open up another career option - for our graduates to become the employers of the future. However, we recognise that not all students will want to start their own business. The purpose of the course is also to give those students an introduction to the entrepreneurial process and a better understanding of what it is like to work in a small business, so that these people will feel more comfortable working in a small or entrepreneurial business after graduation.
Q: What is the individual assignment?
At City West, we implement a "Team Based Learning" approach to teaching this course. This means that the first assignment is taken as five multiple-choice tests taken at the start of each session except the first. In the first session, you are given a practice test that does not count for marks.
At Whyalla and Mt Gambier, in the first session of the seminar series, you will be given four questions addressing the course content of the first couple of days. At the end of the seminar series, you will be given 30 minutes to answer one of those questions, and this will be done under exam conditions. The lecturer/seminar series includes a session on "answering examination questions" that will help students to understand the expectations regarding this assessment.
Q: What is the exam?
This course includes a two-hour written examination. This will cover all aspects of the course. This accounts for 50% of the total assessment for the course. The lecturer/seminar series includes a session on "answering examination questions" that will help students to understand the expectations regarding the examination.
Q: When is the exam?
In SP1, this exam will be held one week after the feasibility plan has been presented, and before the start of Semester 1. Details of the date, time and location appear in the timetable for the course. In SP3 and SP6, the exam will be held during the exam periods for those study periods. Check the University website for the date, time and location.
Q: What are the arrangements for deferred exams, or for special consideration?
If you wish to apply for a deferred examination (or for special consideration), then you need to do this through Campus Central within the required number of days following the examination. Arrangements will then be made by School of Management staff, and you will be advised by e-mail. Please do not contact the lecturer regarding these arrangements, or about the scheduling of deferred examinations.
Q: How are we allocated into teams?
The lecturer allocates teams in the first lecture/seminar session. You will sit with your team members, as you will carry out a number of team exercises during the three days of intensive sessions.
Q: Can we form our own teams?
Team allocation is based on gender, study program and international/local student status, and the aim is to include a range of viewpoints and capabilities in each team. This approach reflects the workplace, where people are put together to carry out specific projects. Our experience has been that teams that are self selected do not get on as well as teams that are allocated (and this is why we go to the trouble of allocating teams). If two or three members of a project team are friends or work together, then this can put the other team member(s) in a difficult situation, or at a disadvantage, if the relationship is not well managed. In addition, if something goes wrong in the project team, the problem may be carried over into the workplace if members of the team work together.
Our view is that University offers a great opportunity to meet people from other study programs and from other countries, and the people you work with in a project team may be valuable members of your (International) network in the future.
Q: What is the team assessment?
The class will be given a single business idea as the subject for your project work and your project report. This idea has been selected on the basis of its potential for development in the form of a feasibility report. There are many advantages that arise from this approach. In particular, the business idea will be discussed during the week of seminars and exercises. This means that your team will be able to develop a very good feel for your project during the lecture sessions, and this will make the project more interesting, and easier to deal with (than if you chose your own topic).
You will cover key aspects of the report preparation task in your team exercises during the intensive sessions. You will be expected to meet as a team to produce the plan. You must use the Word document and the Excel spreadsheet templates (that are provided on the course web site) to develop the report as a Poster Plan. The full specification for the report is included in the course website. Teams attend a report presentation and review session that allows students to learn from the work that other teams have done, and to get immediate feedback on their own work. The report is assessed as a whole - that is, a grade is given for the report, so that each team member receives the same grade for this assessment (although it is possible to award different grades if necessary).
Q: Can we use our own report templates?
You have access to templates to produce the outputs required for this course. They have been tailored to the needs of this course and to our local conditions. Although you can get document and financial templates with entrepreneurship textbooks and from various web sites, these are not appropriate and are not to be used for this course. In particular, teams learn by comparing their work with that of other teams at the report presentation and review session, and this is possible only because every team uses the same format and layout for their reports.
Q: What is the screening tool?
The CDE has developed a number of electronic questionnaires that are used to evaluate a wide range of business activities and capabilities, including innovation capability, entrepreneurial orientation, strategy development, opportunity screening, technology screening, and product portfolio management. Students taking this course are given access to a version of the CDE Business Opportunity Screening Tool that allows teams to evaluate business ideas in a professional way.
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