A start-up generation approach for teaching entrepreneurship: an overview of affective learning results

This study reports an analysis of the training objectives achieved by students with a heterogeneous educational background who attended a university entrepreneurial course. The course emphasized an experiential approach of a start-up creation. A pre-experimental design was followed to collect data on a sample of fourteen students who completed the six-month course. Findings, based on a non-parametric test, show significant differences between the pre and post-test. After the course, participants displayed a higher level of self-efficacy in making decisions, a higher level of probability of becoming entrepreneurs and a lower level of pessimism in projecting their future. Despite deserving to be corroborated with a more sophisticated research design, this study contributes to the extant literature by providing further empirical support about the role played by entrepreneurial courses in fostering harbinger variables of entrepreneurial behavior. Future research issues and practical implications are illustrated with respect to optimism and pessimism.