Lexington, KY – In the teaching world, classes about business and entrepreneurship don’t often begin at the elementary or even middle school levels. But a program administered by the University of Kentucky and funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is working to change that in some of the state’s most economically challenged rural areas.
E-Discovery Challenge is a curriculum-based program that incorporates a hands-on approach, applying what is learned en route to creating successful business teams within participating schools, according to Melony Denham, the E-Discovery Challenge Project Manager.
That curriculum was developed after Denham and Annette Walters graduated from UK’s Kentucky Entrepreneurial Coaches Institute (KECI) and saw a need for youth curriculum. KECI was the brainchild of Dr. Ron Hustedde, a sociology professor at UK in Community and Leadership Development Department.
“We train elementary and middle school teachers to use E-Discovery Challenge curriculum in the classroom. Once they take the training, the teachers roll it out in a way that best fits their school schedules,” she said.
Those schedules can vary from school to school, but the teachers complete the course, which is comprised of nine sessions, at a time of their choosing during the school year. The idea is to come up with a “business model” while executing the program. This will culminate with a planned sales event where the students will have an opportunity to make money from their new venture.
Generally teams of three to five students are organized. Each receives $15 as seed money, managed by their teachers. Denham emphasized that classrooms could work together as one large team for larger projects, but as a rule the small teams usually make more money.
“The students get into their teams and brainstorm along with doing creativity exercises to help them come up with what will work best for their team, be it a product or service,” she added. “The teachers can conduct the nine sessions in different ways but at the end of the sessions the students will have developed their businesses and be ready to sell.”
The students will even do market research to prove their product or service is something their “buyers” will want. From there they are able to tweak their business model based on feedback received from those potential customers.
Denham said in doing this type of research some teams have realized their idea needs to be changed and back to the drawing board they go. She also pointed out that teams that don’t do their market research have a high failure rate.
“That’s okay. It’s part of the learning. But they have to really focus so they can up with new ideas and go through the steps to make sure it is going to be something that works,” she said.
After a sales event has been completed, the seed money is returned to the school so that it can be used for the next class, making for a sustainable project. Any profit can be split among team members.
“Once the students grasp that on the front end, it’s very motivating,” Denham said. “And we have had some teams that had a major amount of money to split between team members.”
The project is now in the fourth year of utilizing the ARC grant but Denham and Walters taught the program in a private school setting for two years prior to that grant funding through UK.
Heather Wells, a social studies teacher at East Carter Middle School in Carter County has been involved with the E-Discovery Challenge over the last four years and has seen some very innovative projects and services created by her students.
She said every nine weeks she would have a different class to go through the program; each one getting started by going through the notebook of curriculum materials used as part of the course. After narrowing the list of product ideas to five, students then vote to choose a focus.
“They always came up with pretty good ideas and most were unique,” Wells said.
One of those included a fishing worm business created by her “fishermen” which were sold to a local bait store.
“It was a project the students could even continue after the nine week period was over,” added Wells.
That project was so popular, the business team couldn’t keep up with the demand, she noted.
Wells’ students have centered their exploration of products around holidays or events going on in the school to help come up with good ideas.
One group made Valentine’s bags decorated and filled with goodies. Students were able to sell more than 300 of those bags.
Another group created E-Discovery Challenge calendars which included marked dates for various holidays, school events and sports activities along with pictures of various school groups. Students were able to double their investment on that particular project.
“Every group that I have had made enough profit for the whole class to go to a movie,” she said. “We’ve tried to make it something in which the whole group would reap the benefits and I wanted them all to get to celebrate in it.”
Wells said the students really liked the hands-on aspect of the program and “learned a lot by doing” while also learning responsibility and how to collaborate with other students.
Denham noted that while all students could benefit from E-Discovery Challenge, it is especially important to understand that ARC funds education projects that will benefit students in the most economically distressed counties where many schools don’t have the opportunities that some of the more “affluent” counties do.
“This is giving these students and schools the chance to shine and show their talent, and they are amazing,” she said.
Denham said the original seed money is in place in the participating schools and she is encouraged that many of the teachers involved plan to continue E-Discovery. The effort now is to train other teachers so that these projects will continue to happen and students will continue to discover the entrepreneurs within them.
“The ARC provided the funding for this entrepreneurial initiative and we are so pleased for their support and the results we have been able to achieve for students,” she said. “We would like to see others interested in seeing this effort continue in Kentucky provide additional funding so we can expand this initiative.”
For more information about E-Discovery Challenge email Denham at melony.denham@uky.edu.