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Introduction
Entrepreneurship, or the process of starting up a new enterprise, presents challenges because of the need to make decisions addressing a very wide range of aspects of business management in situations where there is a great deal of uncertainty ([38] Timmons et al. , 2011). Thus, students of entrepreneurship need to develop a wide range of practical and conceptual skills in order to eventually deal with the complexity of the entrepreneurial process ([14] Gibb, 2002). As a result, the entrepreneurship education literature places a great deal of emphasis on developing in students the capabilities to make decisions in situations of high ambiguity ([1] Arvanites et al. , 2006; [24] Kailer, 2009). In particular, it is seen to be desirable that teaching methods engage students so that they can best learn how to deal with the complexities of new venture creation ([4] Biggs, 2003).
Reviews of the content of entrepreneurship courses reveal a very wide range of teaching methods ([24] Kailer, 2009; [36] Solomon, 2008). Nevertheless, there is general agreement that teaching needs to be learner-centred, and help students to understand elements of entrepreneurial activity ([14] Gibb, 2002; [23] Jones and Iredale, 2010; [41] Zahra and Welter, 2008). Engagement is most important for achieving learning objectives, as well as for attracting students, and retaining them once they are enrolled ([6] Coates, 2009). There is little agreement, however, in the entrepreneurial education literature regarding specific guidelines for selecting teaching methods that might best engage a particular group of students in order to transmit the desired body of entrepreneurship knowledge, and stimulate future learning. Due to the very wide range of teaching methods considered appropriate in the field, it would of be great value for educators to be able to identify those teaching methods that are likely to be the most engaging and effective for their specific profile of students.
This paper gives educators who have access to results from engagement surveys carried out in the USA through the National Study of Student Engagement (NSSE), or the equivalent Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE), a tool for identifying teaching methods that are the most likely to engage their cohort of students. This tool is based on applying department-level results to assess the likely level of engagement of...