Students’ Acceptance towards Entrepreneurship Module at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Abstract

Introduction: Entrepreneurship CMIE 1022 module was introduced in February 2012 and was made compulsory to all first year undergraduate students in all faculties of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). The main objective of CMIE 1022 is to expose the students to entrepreneurship with implementation of online teaching and business game simulation. Method: Module evaluation form was distributed among medical and nursing students at the end of the module. Result: One hundred seventy-seven students responded to the survey with 50.3% of the respondents agreed that their soft skill have improved, 37.8% for increased awareness of entrepreneurship, 25.6% has increased their interest in entrepreneurship and 22.22% agreed to apply in their own courses. More than three quarter of the students agreed that the lecturers and teaching assistants teaching methodology were acceptable. However, only 18.4% agreed that this course should be taken by all students of UKM. Conclusion: This study showed despite increase in soft skills and interests including high performance of the academics, most students disagreed on the introduction of CMIE 1022 course to all UKM students. It is suggested that the course curriculum to be reviewed in order to achieve the objectives.

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Education in Medicine Journal (ISSN 2180-1932) © www.eduimed.com | e87
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Full name: Dr Mohamad Nurman Yaman, Department of Medical Education,
UKM Medical Centre, Bandar Tun Razak, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur. Email: mdnurman@gmail.com
Introduction
Entrepreneurship can be defined as the
competency and readiness to develop, organize
and manage a business endeavour (1). This can
be combined with innovation and risk-taking and
deemed to be an integral part of a nation’s ability
to thrive in ever challenging and increasingly
competitive worldwide marketplace. Wahome et
al agreed that in order for Malaysia to become a
high-income nation to fulfill Malaysia Vision
2020, Malaysia has to change into a knowledge-
based and innovative economy. In view of this,
new workforce consisting of people of well
grounded in science, engineering and technical
vocations as well as in entrepreneurial skill must
be produced and retained. Therefore
entrepreneurial skill is considered as an
important element in education in Malaysia.
According to Malaysian Qualifications Agency,
one of the eight domains of learning outcomes in
Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF) of
education is Managerial and Entrepreneurial
Skills (3).
© Medical Education Department, School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Introduction:
Entrepreneurship CMIE 1022 module was introduced in
February 2012 and was made compulsory to all first year undergraduate
students in all faculties of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). The
main objective of CMIE 1022 is to expose the students to entrepreneurship
with implementation of online teaching and business game simulation.
Method: Module evaluation form was distributed among medical and
nursing students at the end of the module. Result: One hundred seventy-
seven students responded to the survey with 50.3% of the respondents
agreed that their soft skill have improved, 37.8% for increased awareness of
entrepreneurship, 25.6% has increased their interest in entrepreneurship and
22.22% agreed to apply in their own courses. More than three quarter of the
students agreed that the lecturers and teaching assistants teaching
methodology were acceptable. However, only 18.4% agreed that this course
should be taken by all students of UKM. Conclusion: This study showed
despite increase in soft skills and interests including high performance of
the academics, most students disagreed on the introduction of CMIE 1022
course to all UKM students. It is suggested that the course curriculum to be
reviewed in order to achieve the objectives.
Students’ Acceptance towards Entrepreneurship Module at Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia
Mohamad Nurman Yaman, Mohammad Arif Kamarudin, Mohd Nasri Awang Besar, Siti
Mariam Bujang, Abdus Salam, Harlina Halizah Siraj, Nabishah Mohamad
Department of Medical Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre, Malaysia
SHORT COMMUNICATION
Volume 6 Issue 4 2014
DOI:10.5959/eimj.v6i4.312
www.eduimed.com
ARTICLE INFO
Received : 13/09/2014
Accepted : 03/11/2014
Published : 01/12/2014
KEYWORD
Entrepreneurship
Soft Skills
Medical Students
Awareness
Curriculum

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In view of this recent development, Centre of
Entrepreneurship and Small and Medium
Enterprise Development (CESMED) of
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) have
come out with a new teaching module named
Basic Entrepreneurship and Innovation with a
course code of CMIE 1022. The main objective
of this course is to expose the students of UKM
with entrepreneurial skill and to excite interest
among the students to apply entrepreneurship
skill in their future career.
The learning outcomes of this course are [1] to
recognize of the basic concept in
entrepreneurship; [2] describe the elements in
entrepreneurship; [3] apply entrepreneurship
knowledge through online business simulation
game; [4] interpret the outcome of the business
simulation game, and; [5] perform presentation
in order to convince investor to invest into the
course.
This course involves contact with CESMED
fellows, online lectures, online quizzes,
presentations, common lecture and online
business simulation game. This CMIE 1022
course has been introduced to all first year
undergraduate students in all faculties in UKM.
Therefore, CESMED fellows are appointed
among the lecturers in all faculties according to
the number of students. These fellows were
assisted by teaching assistants provided by the
Faculty of Economics and Management. The
common lectures were given by prominent
entrepreneurs in Malaysia and were held in Tun
Abdul Razak Chancellery Hall in UKM Main
Campus in Bangi as well as being shown via
direct telecast to UKM Kuala Lumpur Campus,
UKM Medical Centre and Allianze University
College Medical College (AUCMS) in Kepala
Batas. The content of the online lectures, online
quizzes and online business simulation game
were provided by Stevens Institute of
Technology (SIT). These online lectures
provided were marketing, strategy, oral
presentation, financial, production and teaming
modules. The quizzes were conducted after each
module where the students had to answer and
submitted the answers online.
This study is to evaluate the CMIE 1022 course
among the first year medical and nursing
students in the Faculty of Medicine, UKM
Medical Centre, mainly looking at the students’
acceptance towards the module, bearing in mind
as this is the first entrepreneurship course to be
conducted compulsorily to the medical students
in Malaysia (4).
Method
This descriptive statistical survey was conducted
at the end of the CMIE 1022 module in May
2012 during the entrepreneurship carnival. There
were 217 first year medical and 40 nursing
students of session 2011/2012 and a total of 177
responded to the survey. The data were obtained
from Course Evaluation Form prepared by
CESMED. The questionnaires were answered
anonymously. The questions that were selected
for this study were: “This course has increase my
soft skills”, “This course has change my
awareness towards entrepreneurship”, “This
course has increase my interest in
entrepreneurship”, “I have applied
entrepreneurship into my own course”, “Fellows’
performance in teaching and learning of CMIE
1022”, “Should UKM students enrol into
entrepreneurship course?”. These questions were
marked using Likert scale (Strongly Agree,
Agree, Average, Disagree, and Strongly
Disagree). Another question selected was
whether the students will take follow-up course
in entrepreneurship in the following years in the
university. Data were collected and analysed
using SPSS Version 20. UKM Action and
Strategic Grant PTS-2012-084 was used for this
study.
Result
Table 1 shows the students’ perception towards
CMIE 1022 entrepreneurship course.
Approximately 97% of the students disagree to
enroll in the follow-up entrepreneurship course.

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Discussion
From the survey, 50.3% of the students
responded that their soft skills have increased.
The soft skills involved were leadership,
teamwork and communication skills. In this
module, all students were divided into a group of
5 people which will represent a company. Each
group has given the task to design and promote
two Bluetooth headsets, of which one was high-
end and the other was low-end. They also have
to organize themselves in a company. Using the
online teaching materials that they have gone
through, they had to come out with a business
plan for promoting the headsets. With all these
exercises, their leadership, teamwork and
communication skills do increase.
Thirty-seven point eight percent of the students
agreed that the course has increased their
awareness about entrepreneurship while 25.6%
agreed that they developed interest in
entrepreneurship after going through this course.
These results may be related to less exposure of
any branch of entrepreneurship i.e. financial and
marketing as medical and nursing students were
in science stream which mainly did not include
any of these subjects in their secondary schools.
Only 22.22% of the students will apply the
knowledge that they gain from the
entrepreneurship course into their own course.
This is because the medical and nursing
curriculum are mainly focusing on medicine and
nursing. These students also felt that there would
not be any benefit of using the knowledge during
their medical and nursing education years. This
is also supported by Rhodes where the author
stated that it is unusual for a physician to receive
training in economics and finance (5).
As highlighted earlier, the lecturers in the
Faculty of Medicine with the assistance of
teaching assistants from Faculty of Economics
and Management were appointed as the fellow of
CESMED in conducting this course. Seventy-six
point eight percent of the students agreed that the
teaching of CMIE 1022 was acceptable. Despite
that, 43.7 % of the students disagreed that this
course should be taken by all students of UKM.
This is because each degree programme in UKM
has different learning outcomes compared to
CMIE 1022, thus making CMIE 1022 module to
be burdensome to non-business degree students.
Some students also highlighted that being
doctors and nurses, their aim was to treat and
help people and not to earn profit or into
business.
In contrast, few authors have highlighted the
importance of entrepreneurial skills among
healthcare providers including doctors and
nurses. As the technology progress and become
more sophisticated, traditional way of life has
been discarded. Wahome et al has highlighted
that for Malaysia to be a developed nation and a
high-income nation by 2020, drastic changes
especially in education, science and agriculture
need to be engaged especially in
entrepreneurship and innovative skills among its
people (2). Therefore, joint venture for example
with New York Academy of Sciences as well as
with Stevens Institute of Technology can help
Malaysia as a whole to achieve its target to have
knowledge-based and innovative economy.
UKM has taken the first action to incorporate
Table 1: Students’ perception towards CMIE 1022 entrepreneurship course
Increase My
Soft Skills
(%)
Change Awareness
Towards
Entrepreneurship
(%)
Interest In
Entrepreneurship
(%)
Application of
Entrepreneurship
Into Own Course
(%)
Fellow
Performance in
Teaching
CMIE 1022
(%)
Should UKM
Students Enrol Into
Entrepreneurship
Course? (%)
Disagree
13.3
33.2
44.8
42.7
2.4
43.7
Average
36.4 32.0 29.6 35.1 20.8 37.9
Agree
50.3
37.8
25.6
22.2
76.8
18.4

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entrepreneurship teaching course into the
undergraduate programme and become a
compulsory subject to all first year
undergraduate. What makes it even more unique
is the introduction of entrepreneurship into the
health cluster, namely medicine, nursing,
dentistry, health sciences and pharmacy students.
Rhodes supported that entrepreneurship course
which include innovation will benefit medical
students. The author stated that the traditional
public health system need to be shifted from
‘hierarchical network system’ to a ‘decentralized
network system’, as it will further support the
public health and public finance authorities in
order to create more constructive era of sector
governance (5). Wahome et al also suggested
that there has to be an important role to create
and administer new programmes to promote
mentoring and entrepreneurship, sharing best
practice for higher education reform,
coordinating research as well as university-
industry research opportunities (2).
Toner et al also stated that the current healthcare
system are now very complex with increasing
problems of aging residents, increase of non-
commutable diseases, cancer, obesity, rising
costs, regulatory intervention and increasing
responsibilities in patient safety (6). Thus the
authors suggested introducing invention,
innovation and entrepreneurship skills into
academic medical centres. These will
compliment the vast role of academic medical
centres of not only taking care of patients but
also to improve healthcare by bridging these
innovation to the bedside. They also suggested
that the process needs to be properly
incorporated into the educational syllabus of
medical schools.
Implementation of CMIE 1022 is not without its
flaws. Nevertheless, as this is the first cohort of
its kind in Malaysia, further improvement can be
made to tailor-made the syllabus to suits
Malaysian education system, producing more
talented, skilled and creative healthcare
professional to serve the population.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that CMIE 1022 has indeed
increased students’ soft skills especially in
teamwork, leadership and communication skills.
It also generally have achieved some of its goal
for the students to be more aware of
entrepreneurial and innovation skills in life as
future doctors. With further improvement of the
CMIE 1022 syllabus, more objectives can be
fulfilled.
Reference
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