Author(s): Artur Tavares Vilas Boas Ribeiro, Cesar Alves Ferragi, Francisco Trivinho-Strixino, André Coimbra Félix Cardoso
Amid the COVID-19 crisis, universities were forced to change. Remote education became the norm and challenges appeared, such as on infrastructure, mental health, cognitive overload, and format adaptation. Beyond those changes, universities were demanded to become more entrepreneurial, developing technologies in response to COVID-19, and to train more entrepreneurial talent that could address worldwide scarcity. Current research has already highlighted that Entrepreneurship Education is more effective when active-based. Students achieve meaningful learning through business planning, simulations, working at start-ups, leading student organizations, and building a real business. Thus, training students in practical through remote education worsens university challenges. Although the first responses are being published over entrepreneurship education in remote formats, the present literature is still limited. This paper aims to answer the following question: “how to develop experiential learning entrepreneurship programs under the constraints of remote learning?” It is a Case Study of a Brazilian MBA program and the research method was Participatory Action-Research. The data were collected through classroom surveys (during 108 classes), in-depth interviews, and debriefing sessions. Results demonstrate effective strategies for dealing with cognitive overload at online environments, such as mixing synchronous and asynchronous formats, in-group live activities, peer-based exercises, and more. Resonating with current research on remote learning during COVID-19, challenges are related to infrastructure and personal limitations.