Over the past few days, I have
participated in a truly amazing and informative Technology Entrepreneurship
course hosted complimentary of Stanford University. Entrepreneurship is something that has always interested me
and this course provided a fantastic window into the culture and uniqueness of
the Silicon Valley and why it fosters so many successful startups.
As highlighted in our course
text learning objectives must be clearly communicated. Distance learning course environment must
address learners’ characteristics and needs (Simonson, Smaldino, Albrigth &
Zvaeck, 2012). The course thoughtfully
planned and organized its course assets and instructional activities. Each module communicated what the
learner needed to do if you were taking the course at distance or a full-time
Stanford student. The
course materials were delivered via a Prezi presentation with just the right
amount of content and real world examples. The instructor had a video feed with his lecture throughout
each module, which for me who is a visual and auditory learner worked extremely
well. It was clear the storyboard
of the course had been well crafted with keen eye to how to engage the distance
learner. Each module was
15-20 minutes in length and chunked to the ideal length and depth of content
that worked well for the distance learner. Each module highlighted one or more companies, experts or
recent books which provided course resources at depth that brought their
experiences to life and the learner felt like they were at a booth in Starbucks
talking live with one of these entrepreneurial heroes. You could not get any more authentic or
current and its list of suggested readings follows the best practice captured
in this week’s course readings (Simonson, et al., 2012).
This course followed many of
the best practices and recommendations for online instruction. For example, it utilized
subject matter experts video clips, and excerpts from best selling books, and
theories on entrepreneurship. One video in particular that I found extremely interesting was the video excerpt
of Steve Jobs giving his commencement speech at Stanford. Jobs spoke about how
dropping out of college enabled him to take classes that he was interested in
such as calligraphy. Jobs went on
to share how this course and learning about sans and sans serif text and the
beauty of calligraphy was at the forefront in his design of the Macintosh. He
voiced without this course Apple may not of been what it is today. Lastly, each
course modules had a very nice flow and build and recap summary module to and
reflection to conclude the class, which demonstrated the use of ADDIE model.
Each module posed insightful
questions that made the learner ponder the high level learning objectives. Very innovative activities were woven
into each module and the instructor differentiated instruction with clear
directions if you were distance learner.
For example, one of the
activities was group discussion and analysis reviewing insights and
perspectives on the 15 worst startups.
He also did this for the 15 best startups. This activity engaged all learners and provided learners the
ability to socially engage and provide their personal opinions in fun and
powerful way. It was clear
that the instructor had utilized subject matter experts suggests of types of
activities that would be best to teach the content and coupled this with
real-world business examples which brought the lesson home.
In summary, this course would
be a great one for any entrepreneur thinking of starting his or her own
technology company. You can learn
a lot from companies that either fail or succeed. This course provides a wealth
of entrepreneur concepts and strategies to life and best part yet all for free!
References
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching
and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.)
Boston, MA: Pearson.
Technology Entrepreneurship Online Course from
Stanford University retrieved from:
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