Contributed by Jay Fulgencio

Throughout my experiences in teaching, one of my favorite subjects to teach is entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurship field is ever-changing, and there is no better skill than to teach students entrepreneurial skills that can benefit their career even if they do not want to open their own business. However, Open Education Resources (OER) material for an entrepreneurship course is vague, and you have to rely on the significant textbook publishers for an adequate entrepreneurship textbook. As an entrepreneurship instructor, there is no better time than for entrepreneurship educators to build OER content. The resources are plentiful, but experts need to develop the content so students are guided in the right direction. This post focuses on how entrepreneur educators can build OER content in higher education, starting with entrepreneurship 101 textbooks and case studies. 

OER Entrepreneurship Textbooks and Material are Vague

Three years ago, I was searching for an OER entrepreneurship textbook to use in my teaching. At the time, I only found one good entrepreneurship textbook from the Open Textbook Library titled “Entrepreneurship and Innovation Toolkit” by Lee Swanson. The OER textbooks were either Introduction to Business textbooks or an entrepreneurship chapter within a general business textbook. Fast forward to 2021, and if you type “entrepreneurship 101 OER textbook,” you only get the Open Textbook Library and OpenStax version of the entrepreneurship textbook. OER Commons provides a laundry list of business resources but not much in entrepreneurship education. Please don’t get me wrong, and there is entrepreneurship content available. Still, the problem is that the content is behind paid services such as online courses, textbooks, books, and not with a commons license that will allow an instructor, such as myself, the freedom to adapt for my classroom. Now that you know the vagueness of OER entrepreneurship textbooks, let me provide two solutions. 

Build and Create

The first solution is to start creating a database on OER entrepreneurship content dedicated explicitly to entrepreneurship. Databases such as MERLOT and OER Commons are a good start, but the problem is that the entrepreneurship content will get lost with the rest of the business content, such as accounting and management. Entrepreneurship, just like accounting, needs to have its separate field with its content. 

The second solution is for entrepreneurship educators to create OER content, even if it’s small, like one chapter dedicated to the entrepreneurship subject, an infographic, or even a video. If 100 entrepreneurship educators worldwide created one piece of OER content for entrepreneurship, there would be tremendous growth in available OER entrepreneurship content. 

As an entrepreneurship educator, I understand the aspect of making money. However, the cause is more significant than the dollar bill. In this case, when it comes to students accessing proper entrepreneurship education material for free via OER, perhaps it’s time to sacrifice the money-making aspect. Let me explain how I created my own entrepreneurship 101 OER content. 

Personal Creation

As an educator, I do what I say, so I created a series of entrepreneurship 101 videos from the “Entrepreneurship and Innovation Toolkit.” The videos are found via YouTube by typing “Dr. J Real Talk Entrepreneurship 101.” I created the videos because I wanted students to access video content for free that accompanies the textbook. I did not get paid to make the videos, nor was I supported by any institution. I designed and produced the videos for the more significant cause of entrepreneurship education. The process took me several weeks to do with the storyboarding, shooting of the videos, and editing. I recently did a presentation at the OER 2021 conference about the details about the process.

Continue the OER Movement in Entrepreneurship education. 

A movement doesn’t need one hundred people; it starts with one person with a vision and goal. My OER movement is to build a database with over ten entrepreneurship textbooks available with common licenses, including homework, case studies, exams, and videos that number in the hundreds. Business schools can still build paid textbooks, but if one piece of OER content is in the entrepreneurship field, the movement will cause momentum. All it takes is the first step to the movement started because OER and entrepreneurship education are two subjects made for one another. Are you willing to build OER entrepreneurship content? 

Resources

Can We Really Teach Entrepreneurship At College?

Jay Fulgencio, Ph.D. (he/him) is an instructor in the Heller College of Business at Roosevelt University. Dr. Jose “Jay” Fulgencio is a Chicago native, earned his B.A. from Northeastern Illinois University and M.A., M.S.E., and Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. Dr. Jay has been teaching in higher education for a decade both face to face & online and has been teaching at Roosevelt University Heller College of Business since 2018. Dr. Jay is a scholar-practitioner focused on using technology as a teaching tool and applying entrepreneurial mindset in the classroom. Certifications include Certified Practitioner of the Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile; Innovator Mindset Certified ; Master Online Leader and Administrator ; Blackboard Digital Teaching and Learning Certified Expert ; Moodle Educator Certified; Certified Financial Education Instructor. Dr. Jay served on the Economic Education Advisory Board for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City – Oklahoma City Branch, former Chair of the Online Entrepreneurship Education social interest group and Teaching and Learning Scholar for the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Visit www.jayphd18.com to learn more. 

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