Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 1354

The State of Assessment of Entrepreneur Projects1

Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Bradley L. Golish, Larry J. Shuman, and Harvey Wolfe University of Pittsburgh Philip J. Weilerstein National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance

The assessment of entrepreneurship and innovation projects and coursework is relatively new in engineering education. At the past two National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) annual meetings, roundtables focusing on assessment provided participants with the opportunity to share their concerns with regards to assessment of E-teams and related programs. As a result of these roundtables, the University of Pittsburgh is developing a database containing information from the various projects sponsored by the NCIIA. We are specifically focusing on the assessment of entrepreneur-based projects and programs by participating NCIIA members. The database will allow NCIIA participants to: access web-based instruments, obtain guidance on how to conduct an assessment, and learn about assessment/evaluation practices in academic entrepreneurship programs.

As an initial effort, current and past NCIIA participants were surveyed to determine the variety of assessments they have conducted on E-teams as well as any long-term impact that the "E-team experience" has had on students. Concomitantly, a database of assessment instruments and methodologies provided by the participants as well as those identified through other sources is being maintained. This paper describes the results of the survey and how the resulting database can be used in the evaluation of entrepreneur-based projects.

1.0 Introduction

The 2001 and 2002 National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) Annual Meetings featured roundtables that focused on assessment. The purpose of each roundtable was to provide participants with the opportunity to share their concerns with regards to assessment of E-teams and related programs as well as make suggestions to the NCIIA about how it could help its membership in the area of assessment. The initial roundtable participants recommended that NCIIA develop a database to gather data from and distribute information to its participating membership. The second roundtable centered on the programmatic needs for such a database. As a result of the second roundtable several action items were set for NCIIA to pursue. Though the questions posed to both roundtables and a follow-up email survey highlighted a range of issues, the predominant need of the participants remained the same – an assessment database system for E-teams. Specifically, participants requested a database system that provides: guidance on how to conduct an assessment, instruments and methods to assess E-teams, and summarized statistics on 1 This work is being sponsored by a grant from the National Collegiate Invent ors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), entitled Development of an Assessment Database System for E-teams.

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Besterfield-Sacre, M., & Shuman, L., & Golish, B., & Weilerstein, P., & Wolfe, H. (2003, June), The Status Of Entrepreneurial Project Assessment Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--11876