This Master thesis describes the work with an education experiment for a virtual elective in entrepreneurship. The experiment is based on action research as a method. The virtual elective in entrepreneurship takes place at Copenhagen School of Design and Technology, and involves one teacher, and two students. With action research as a method both the teacher and the students are involved in the process as co-designers and participatory evaluation partners.
The elective is the first in an iteration of experiments. The knowledge generated will qualify and guide the re-design of the elective, which is tested in a new experiment. The focus of the experiment is based on didactic activities in a virtual framework and how this framework can encourage learning community and collaborative learning and promote the learning process. The experiment is mediated through Google's platforms.
The students integrate the communication resource such as the chat-function parallel to the lecture, and outside the lectures they choose to use resources made available in the platform. The experiment shows that the students acquire knowledge about entrepreneurship and that it is possible to establish a feeling of presence in the video conferencing platform, and that there is created cooperation between the students, as seen in their collaborative work on the concept development of one student's business idea. In this experiment the conclusion also points to the importance of clear definition of the relationship between lecturer and student, and that this kind of virtual education may require a greater responsibility and maturity of the student.