Assessing Curriculum Designed to Foster Students’ Entrepreneurial Knowledge and Small Business Skills from a Global Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to report on outcomes of a 3-year collaborative project that addresses the need for future professionals with entrepreneurial knowledge and small business skills. The multiphase project involved partnerships developed between textile and apparel faculty at four U. S. universities and faculty in similar programs at universities in Thailand, India, Russia, and South Africa. Based on primary and secondary research conducted with small apparel businesses and entrepreneurs in the five countries during Phase I of the project, eight modules were created for integration into existing textile and apparel courses during Phase II. Phase III focused on the assessment of students' knowledge and skills following delivery of the modules. This paper reports on the results of module assessment via a repeated measures experiment using pre-and postsurveys that included closed-and open-ended questions. Analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data indicated that modules helped to increase students' entrepreneurial knowledge and small business skills from a global perspective.