Collaborative Learning in Entrepreneurship Education in a Japanese Business School.

Entrepreneurship education is important for successful economic and social development. Business schools all over the world have become increasingly aware of the importance of entrepreneurship education and collaborative learning to expand global markets. Some previous studies assert that collaboration is a factor for success in higher education. Students improve their attitudes and communication skills by collaborative learning. Other studies argue that individual performance depends on team performance. Although entrepreneurship programs in business schools are often designed as team-based courses, research is scarce on collaborative learning in entrepreneurship education. This study examined the perceptions of collaborative learning in a sample of 17 international and 5 Japanese students taking an entrepreneurship course as part of an MBA program taught in English at a Japanese business school. Japanese students had more than 10 years of work experience. On the other hand, international students of eleven different nationalities had never worked full time or had less than three years of work experience. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in English for international students and in Japanese for Japanese students in June and July 2017. Data comprised 34,685 words in English and 17,433 words in Japanese. The KH Coder text-mining tool was used for qualitative content analysis to visualize concepts in the large text dataset and create a collocation network of linear connections. Results revealed that students reported that class participation and teamwork were important. Both Japanese and international students tend to participate more in group work and engage in class participation. However, their perception of the sessions, awareness of becoming an entrepreneur, and objectives in the course differed by nationality: international students focused on certain sessions such as business model, marketing, and entrepreneurship, although Japanese students remembered most sessions. International students think being an entrepreneur is difficult, but Japanese students thought that becoming an entrepreneur is an experience. Furthermore, international students focused on obtaining employment in Japan, whereas Japanese students focused on international collaborative learning experience and improving their English language skills. Collaborative learning for diverse classes of students should be enhanced in future courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]