Content Analysis of Curriculum Syllabus for the Educational Technology Discipline Based on Entrepreneurial Competencies

Abstract

Background: Entrepreneurship education seeks to provide students with knowledge, skills, attitudes, and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success in a variety of settings. The purpose of the present study was to perform content analysis of curriculum syllabus for the educational technology discipline based on entrepreneurial competencies. Methods: The research population consisted of all 763 academic curriculums of the educational technology discipline at the University of Tehran during years 2016 to 2017, where the census sampling method was used for their selection. To select them, the purposive sampling method in the entrepreneurs section and census sampling method in the educational technology course syllabus section were used. The research tool in this study was a semi-structured interview and a content analysis checklist was used. This study used a summative qualitative content analysis approach. Initially, interviews were carried out with 12 entrepreneurs to extract entrepreneurial competencies. Then, based on their competencies, a content analysis checklist, including 46 entrepreneurial competencies, was designed in a subset of 6 categories, so that the presence of entrepreneurial competencies in the syllabus of the undergraduate educational technology curriculum was analyzed. To determine the validity of the tool, content validity was used and a check list was provided to three educational specialists and was approved and used after correction. The content analysis construct validity was verified by supervisors, consultants, and entrepreneurs and its reliability was calculated as 94% using William Scott's method. Results: The results showed that the presence of entrepreneurship competency structure among the curriculum syllabus of educational technology at Tehran University did not have a desirable condition. Conclusions: Therefore, it is imperative that higher education professionals and curriculum developers should take the necessary steps to push students towards entrepreneurship in terms of reviewing the curriculum in educational technology at Tehran University.