This document summarizes best practices for teaching entrepreneurship research skills to students from three entrepreneurship librarians. It discusses designing effective research assignments by establishing clear learning objectives and incorporating librarians early in the process. It also recommends requiring students to use authoritative sources like IBIS World and Census data, and working these sources into grading rubrics. The document notes that secondary research has limits and primary research may be necessary. It concludes by outlining benefits of partnering with librarians, such as providing integrated research sessions tailored to course needs.

1. Teaching
Entrepreneurship
Research Skills to
Students:
Best Practices from Three
Entrepreneurship Librarians
Mary G. Scanlon, Wake Forest University
Steve Cramer, UNC-Greensboro
Diane K. Campbell, Rider University

2. Agenda
1. Designing the most effective research
assignments: Mary
2. Requiring students to use the best and most
authoritative research sources: Steve
3. The limits of secondary research and when
primary research is necessary: Steve
4. Inviting your business librarian to provide
active learning research workshops at the
point of need, plus research consultations
with students as follow-up: Diane

3. 1. Designing Effective Assignments

4. Start with the end in mind
 What are your learning objectives
for the research project?

5. Establish Learning Objectives
 Learning objectives
Observable
Measurable

6. Learning Objectives
 If something isn’t a learning objective,
don’t expect it of students.
 Example:
 if the objective is for students to analyze
financial statements, provide them.
 If the objective is to have students find and
analyze financial statements, then teach them
where and how to locate and download them.

7. Learning Objectives
 Consider the following:
Skills
Process
Knowledge

8. Bloom’s Taxonomy of
Learning
Creating
Evaluating
Analyzing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering

9. Project Design
 Incorporate your librarian into the
development phase

10. Instructional Activities
 Who will teach or demonstrate all of the
skills required for the assignment?
 In what format?
 How will you provide support to students
while they’re working on the project?

11. Assessment
 Determine levels within each
learning objective category and
develop your grading rubric as you
design the assignment
 For instance:
 Must have…
 Good to have…
 Above and beyond…

12. Congruency is the Key

13. 2. Requiring Students to Use the
Best Sources

14. Requiring students to use the
best and most authoritative
research sources
A. Examples of “best sources” by topic
B. Selling their value to students
C. Working best sources into a grading rubric

15. Defining “best sources”
 Currency
 Level of detail (examples: levels of
geography; industry & market
segmentations)
 Authoritative
 Customizable (ex. statistical data)
 Mappable

16. Examples of “best sources” by
topic
Industry analysis (reports and/or
statistics):
 IBIS World
 First Research
 Plunkett
 BizMiner
 Census (Economic Census; County Business Patterns)
Industry ratios & financial benchmarking
 RMA eStatement Studies
 Duns Key Business Ratios
 BizMiner
 Census (Economic Census; County Business Patterns)
 PrivCo

17. Competitive intelligence
 ReferenceUSA
 Hoovers
 PrivCo
 Annual reports to shareholders & 10-K’s
Market reports
 Mintel
 Euromonitor

18. Market data & mapping (demographics,
psychographics, consumer spending)
 SimplyMap
 DemographicsNow
 Business Decision
 Census (American Community Survey)
 BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX)

19. Two multi-purpose databases:
Business Source (Ebsco)
ABI-INFORM (ProQuest)
Both provide:
 A huge collection of popular, trade, and
academic journals covering all business
topics, industries, corporate trends, etc.
 Collections of industry and company reports

20. Selling their value to students
“Using these sources will save you
time”
Why?
 They are designed for projects/research
like this
 They collect relevant analysis, trends, and
statistical data into one place
 You can usually download the information
as PFDs, Word documents, or spreadsheets

21. Emphasize customization.
Examples:
 “You are required to define your local
industry size, local market size, local
competitors, etc.”
 Mapped data can be more illustrative,
interesting, and convincing than data in a
paragraph or a table.

22. Use professional terminology.
Not “library research” but:
“Big data analysis tools”
“Competitive intelligence”
“Proprietary subscription tools”
And Business Librarian = “research consultant”

23. Show the high cost of individual reports from
business databases (free to students) to
corporate users:
One IBIS report: $1,020
One Mintel report: $3,995
One Euromonitor report: $2,650
Prices from http://www.marketresearch.com/

24. Show examples of database content (your librarian can help with this).
IBIS and SimplyMap

25. Working best sources into a
grading rubric
Example from my ENT 530 capstone description:
Using a variety of relevant, high-quality sources,
including data: 22 points.
Maximum points awarded for covering all the relevant
topics listed above using most of the core sources
highlighted throughout the semester, including
Economic Census data and/or other Census business
and industry data. All your sources need to make sense
for your proposed business idea – don’t include off-
topic information or sources.

26. 3. The Limits of Secondary Research

27. The limits of secondary
research and when primary
research is necessary:
“Steve, where can I look up the market
size or sales demand of rugby cleats in
the Greensboro/Winston-Salem urban
area?”

28. 4. Partner with your Librarian

29. Partnering with the business
librarian to:
 Adapt business research sessions to
course needs
 Consult at the time of syllabus
creation
 Collaborate on assignment design
 Assess information literacy in business
research
 And more…

30. Integrated Research Sessions in
an Entrepreneurship Intro Course
 Add to course learning management system
(ex: Canvas)
 Active learning with hands-on practice in all
sessions
 First session on industry resources
 Second session on demographics
 Third session on competition
 Personal consultation with each team by the
librarian

31. Integrated Research Session in an
Entrepreneurship Capstone
 Weekly team meetings in the library for the
first half of the course
 Review of market research from intro course
 Addition of sessions on pricing & promotion,
real estate & purchasing, and wages
 Two to three additional sessions of hands-on
work for the teams with the librarian as
consultant

32. Benefits for all
 Students can research in greater depth, and
will spend time on analysis rather than
searching--leading to higher quality work
 Students experience the process of
information gathering and learn a model
appropriate for entrepreneurs
 Feedback from the class/faculty member
means evidence for acquisition of better
resources

33. Questions?

34. Contacts
 Mary Scanlon: scanlomg@wfu.edu
 Diane Campbell: dcampbell@rider.edu
 Steve Cramer: smcramer@uncg.edu