A contemporary approach to entrepreneurship education

Entrepreneurial education is the process of providing individuals with the ability to recognise commercial opportunities and the insight, self-esteem, knowledge and skills to act on them. It includes instruction in opportunity recognition, commercialising a concept, marshalling resources in the face of risk, and initiating a business venture. It also includes instruction in traditional business disciplines such as management, marketing, information systems and finance. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and introduction of a new programme in entrepreneurship at the University of Tasmania. Within this programme the process and responsibility of learning has largely been reversed through the process of student centred learning. This method of learning represents a challenging departure from traditional mainstream teaching practices. In considering the benefits achievable from this teaching method, this paper also considers the difficulties in transferring increased responsibility to students to manage their futures.