Clubs, Pubs, Sleep or Study: How can we better engage with learners?

This paper examines the learning needs of students and businesses and asks the question ?Can educators deliver skills to meet the needs of an evolving business sector?? As recently as 2009 at the International Entrepreneurship Educators Conference the feedback from a workshop run by the author, participants indicated that the kind of activities they would want to engage in to acquire new skills (Wilman et al., 2009) So, should we be more focused on the learners needs versus what we want to teach? Research suggests that a community bases approach to learning is successful because it focuses on the needs of the learner, and does not focus on evaluating learners (Redmond et al., 2008). Supporting this theory is a research study by the Learning and Skills Development Agency, which showed that employers and employees learn best from their everyday experiences, and place great value on informal learning rather than on taught courses or structured training programmes, (Anon, 2004). Project ? based courses are favoured for the development of skills (Mc Mullan et al., 1991), which has been used with some success at the University of Alberta with some success (Preshing, 1991). Increasingly, educators are using experiential learning (Smart et al., 1999) which ties in with what employers want. Given the choice of a club, a pub, sleep or study, how can we better engage with students better?