Syllabus

Note: This is the recent(ish) syllabus that I'm using for ENT 3003. All of the exercises, instructions, and due dates are already captured in our LMS, so I use the syllabus to list the basic contact information, course description and objectives, and types of exercises students will complete. 

Principles of Entrepreneurship

ENT 3003 / Spring 2016

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center / University of Florida

Instructors:                Christopher Pryor, Ph.D.

                                   

Head Mentor:            Nicholas Mills

Office location:          133M Bryan Hall

E-mail address:          cgp@warrington.ufl.edu

Phone:                        Office: (352) 273-0331

Office Hours:             By appointment, gladly!

Text:                          Entrepreneurship: Theory, Process, Practice, Donald F. Kuratko

Classroom:                 Heavener 140

Class Time:                Tuesdays & Thursdays, 4:05 – 6 p.m.

Course Description

It’s easy to name them. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Oprah Winfrey. Mark Zuckerburg. Richard Branson. The entrepreneurs who have dreamed of a world worth living in and who had the will and perseverance to reality to meet their vision. But what of the hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who – although remaining mostly unknown and struggling outside the rapt attention devoted to the famous few – improve their own neighborhoods, churches, cities, schools, and communities through the work of entrepreneurship? They create cool new aps, start after-school programs, and launch local grocery stores, auto garages, and tech companies. They work long hours. They hire employees. They pay taxes. They give back.

Entrepreneurship is found in the story of small victories and local heroes, just as much as it is in the marquee names and headline-grabbing, billion-dollar successes. In this class, we celebrate all of it. During this semester, we will explore and critique and learn about the phenomenon of entrepreneurship.  We approach entrepreneurship as a way of thinking and acting, as an attitude and a behavior. Most importantly, we will learn that entrepreneurship is a process, which can be learned, repeated, and applied to any human endeavor.

            In this course, you will be asked to be an entrepreneur and develop a concept for a viable, scalable business. You will also be asked to critique – thoughtfully, kindly, but thoroughly – the business concepts of your fellow students. In this class, the memorization of concepts and definitions is eschewed in favor of application, and you will be confronted with real-world situations and other opportunities to actually experience what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Course Objectives

This course is built around a number of core objectives. By the end of the semester, you should be able to:

1.      Understand and apply the entrepreneurship process, as well as discern between the different contexts in which the process may unfold, and ways to successfully navigate the process.

2.      Demonstrate an ability to distinguish ideas from opportunities and enhance your ability to recognize and evaluate opportunities.

3.      Develop a business concept, and critique the viability of your own and others’ business concepts.

4.      Demonstrate understanding of the entrepreneurial competencies and how entrepreneurs are different from managers. Moreover, develop and apply these entrepreneurial competencies in this class and in your lives.

Experience Exercises

This class is designed to enable you to begin to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Mindsets – or ways of thinking and acting in the world – aren’t borne through exams, memorization, and multiple-choice quizzes. Mindsets are borne by living through and reflecting on and drawing connections between experiences. In this course, I have devised a series of experience exercises that you may undertake. Each week, several experience exercises will be assigned to you (though you may complete almost all of them in advance). They may loosely be broken down into the following categories, but their purpose is all the same: to get you to start thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur.

Creativity/communication exercises: These exercises are primarily meant to exercise your own creativity and help you acquire practice at communicating your ideas, such as those related to a venture you might start. These exercises are generally worth 1 point each, though some exercises require a bit more input, and these are worth 2 points.

Connection exercises: You will be required to post comments on your fellow students’ blogs. The deadline for you to post these comments will generally be on Thursdays of each week. Completion of these exercises are worth 1 point each.

Reflection exercises. Each week, you will be assigned a reading (or set of readings), and each week, you will write a short reflection on the reading, drawing connections between the reading, your own experiences inside and outside this class, and between your preexisting knowledge of entrepreneurship. Each reflection is worth 1 point.

Competency exercises. There are 13 competencies (or skills) that entrepreneurs tend to be good at. Each week, you will complete an exercise that is designed to help you practice these skills. These exercises are generally worth 2 points each.

The total number of points available through these exercises is 100. In Canvas, instructions and other information for each assignment are written in extensive detail.

Interaction exercises. This semester, we will be using “Yellowdig” as a conversation board inside Canvas. Yellowdig is a cool interface that allows you to share and comment on articles, videos, and other items that are relevant to the course or are interesting to you. We will be using Yellowdig to generate extra credit points in this class. Each post that you make, comment that you write, or “like” that you click will generate a certain number of points. At the end of the semester, these points will be scaled to add extra credit to your final grade in the class. You may earn up to 10 extra credit points in this class via Yellowdig.

The Score Card

Tokens Earned	Equivalent Grade
95	A
90	A-
87	B+
84	B
80	B-
77	C+
74	C
70	C-
67	D+
64	D
60	D-
< 59	E

UF Policies:

University Policy on Accommodating Students with Disabilities: Students requesting accommodation for disabilities must first register with the Dean of Students Office (http://www.dso.ufl.edu/drc/). The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide this documentation to the instructor when requesting accommodation. You must submit this documentation prior to submitting assignments or taking the quizzes or exams. Accommodations are not retroactive, therefore, students should contact the office as soon as possible in the term for which they are seeking accommodations.

University Policy on Academic Misconduct: Academic honesty and integrity are fundamental values of the University community. Students should be sure that they understand the UF Student Honor Code at http://www.dso.ufl.edu/students.php.

The Honor Code: We, the members of the University of Florida community, pledge to hold ourselves and our peers to the highest standards of honesty and integrity.

Pledge: On all work submitted for credit by students of the University of Florida, the following pledge is either required or implied: “On my honor, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid in doing this assignment.”

Please note that violations of this Academic Honor System will not be tolerated. Specifically, I will rigorously pursue incidents of academic dishonesty of any type. Before submitting any work for this class, please read the policies about academic honesty at http://www.dso.ufl.edu/judicial, and ask me to clarify any of its expectations that you do not understand.

Netiquette & Communication Courtesy: All members of the class are expected to follow rules of common courtesy in all email messages, threaded discussions and chats.

Getting Help:

For issues with technical difficulties for the course site or videos, please contact the Technology Assistance Center at: http://warrington.ufl.edu/itsp/techservices/students.asp or call 352-273-0248.