Playful “entrepreneurial learning” in the Corona era at Ondernemerslab Twente

Students of the ROCvanTwente in Enschede practiced the first steps of their entrepreneurship in the game simulation LEARNGame. Learning by playing is a way of learning that requires a small amount of “learning energy”. It is a so-called ‘smart game’, in which the executive functions are activated. Which is educational jargon for “learning by doing”. The game simulation is ‘enrichment content’ in the educational method of ‘thematic education’: here the theme is Entrepreneurship.
Playful entrepreneurial learning: creating added value (= making money), identifying opportunities (the core element of entrepreneurship), learning to negotiate, communication.

The game ensures that the students get to know each other in a different way and that they have different common experiences with each other. It is an answer to the why of joint learning processes.
So why it is necessary to bring pupils / students together to experience the same learning processes. Things you need to learn to survive in the real world: interacting with others, forming coalitions, negotiating, communicating effectively, building trust, taking risks now and then, making money, experiencing and coping with adversity, experiencing successes, etc. Regarding the latter, in the past we have also tested in our game simulations whether the English saying: “success drives success” is actually true. By measuring the number of experienced successes before and after the break. It could simply be established that this is clearly indeed the case.

Actually, this was a pilot to see if we can validate M. Frese’s theory on the step-by-step learning of entrepreneurship. This by digitally registering the transactions, locations and behavior of the participants.  Unfortunately, the measurement of transactions at went wrong again. It was also intended to measure the development of entrepreneurial behavior by performing the behavioral style scan before and after the game simulation (See https://gedragsstijlscans.nl/en/). That also went wrong. Nontheless the video images are  beautiful as can be seen in the video to the right.