Abstract:

Entrepreneurship education is becoming more and more important everywhere in the world and includes all activities aiming to foster entrepreneurial mindsets, attitudes and skills and covering a range of aspects such as idea generation, start-up, growth and innovation (Fayolle, 2009). The effectiveness of an entrepreneurship education program depends mostly on teacher's skill and knowledge of different teaching methods particularly entrepreneurship teaching methods. Teaching methods can broadly be separated into two groups, which are termed “traditional methods” (comprising normal lectures) and “innovative methods” (which are more action-based), also known as passive and active methods. Compared to passive methods, active methods are those that require the instructor to facilitate learning, and apply methods that enable students' self-directed learning. For several years the use of live role-playing as such an "active method" for formal and informal learning has been increasing, both in youth work and adult education. Educational Larp (edu-larp) is a form of spontaneous, co-creative, active learning. It utilizes interactive experiences embedded within conceptual narratives that inspire students to enjoy and retain their lessons. It is defined as "any kind of pedagogical method that uses live action role-playing as a student activity directly connected to the pedagogical purpose of the teaching" (Hylthof, 2010). The application of edu larps can be seen in a variety of areas such as news, travel, sports, and commercials in which tangible and exciting experiences occur. Within entrepreneurship curricula students clearly empathise with, understand and 'feel' the life-world of the entrepreneur through a larp which can also be defined as a learning outcome according to Baume (Baume, 2008). An important aspect for the design of an educational larp is the integration of mobile devices because they allow the teachers or facilitators to use Internet resources, multimedia technologies and integrate them as assignments during the larp. A practical example for the integration of mobile learning to larps are location based larps or mini larps. The educator designs the scenario for the larp and uses the location (e.g. a company site) as the basic scenario. Combining the characteristics of the real world with additional, virtual content gives students the opportunity to incorporate new, attractive and effective dimensions to their learning materials. This is useful in particular for Entrepreneurship courses as the edu larp scenario will ask students for active collaboration and network building during the larp. An existing case study for this is Fairweather Manor (http://www.fmlarp.com/). This larp lasts for three days and the participants take the active role of entrepreneurs and their shareholders during the The First World War. This experience can be enriched by an educator through learning tasks provided through smartphones (e.g. twitter messages) in order to provide learners with interactive small learning tasks in order to engage intrinsic motivation and learning performance. By extending the edu larp through interactive assignments and pursuing indoor or outdoor learning objectives, specific learning outcomes through the individual experience of the entrepreneurial mindset are achieved.

Conluding the author suggests:
1) to integrate educational larps into Entrepreneurship curricula and
2) to extend them by specific mobile learning activitities.

Keywords:

Educational Larps, Entrepreneurial Learning, mobile learning, Learning outcomes.