2. The Develop - an Entrepreneurial ecosystem certificate online course is well designed to
optimize entrepreneurial experience and education. It will help entrepreneurs and
community members realize individual business goals. Although, not a mandatory area
of study. It is recommended that you review this guide and utilize all resources.
STUDY GUIDE
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Part A.
- Getting started with study
- Study Position?
- What to do before you begin study?
- Be fully immersed into the program
- What if I just keep putting things off?
Part B.
- Effective Learning Strategies (Time Management)
- Listening, Note taking, and using visual organizers
- How do I know which community project to engage or
participate?
Part C.
- Practice the Kaizen Principles: The art of remembering and
continuous improvement
- Get your rhythm for remembering things
- Increase your basic knowledge before hand
- Practice Selective information generation
- Meaningful Information
- Strengthening Neural connections (Recitation)
- Visualize Mentally
- Associate familiar things
- Giving time to absorb materials provided
- Distributed Practice
Taking Notes
Things to cover here.
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The first step in commencing your study journey is to get rid of every form
of distraction, create a study schedule to go through session notes, B&C
slack community engagement topics, preparation for next online class. In
addition, One- One session must be thoroughly thought out to get the best of
your time and add value towards your entrepreneurship journey.
There are some major things that need to be taken care of as well and they
consume a large amount of time and efforts. These include, research and
evaluation, business planning, bid writing, Fundraising strategy, and
Community consultation.
You must figure out the best way to deal with interruptions and distractions
from family, friends, phone calls, associates, and others, take stock of time
used to study, time spent implementing processes required to kickstart
identified community plans, also look into the kind of interruption
experienced and take a sincere appraisal of what has been accomplished and
what is left to be done.
The results obtained will help you understand better your strength and
weakness, how to readjust study pattern, ambience, and work activities.
Getting started with your study:
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But why all the fuss about having the right posture in front of a desk, table
and on a straight back chair. It helps improve the rate and speed of
studying, you have more focus and better stamina in concentrating and
getting the job done, you grasp information and understand what your
studying with ease, having the right study position helps improve focus on
work activities and provides longer concentration period.
Most times this works, other times people can barely stay put in a position
for an extended period without getting muscle fatigue, distracted and being
unfocused. Generally, you are advised to use study position method that
works best for you, use the right or ideal posture to study, that works best
for your body, be in a comfortable position, but not too comfortable. You
can stretch, take a break, move around, do a quick exercise to relax neck
and muscles. But remember to sit upright, keep your back straight and use
the ideal study posture.
Study Position:
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This is an integral part of the course study and must be taken very seriously. It
dictates the pace and success of the program. First and foremost you need to
decide where to commence study, choose an appropriate location in your home or
convenient place in your local community center, the next step is to get required
information on the course materials and online study platform log-in credentials.
In addition, the B&C slack community needs to be visited daily to get latest
information, tips, and directive for the weeks k’s program. All materials required
including educational material, notebooks, writing aid should be kept in safe
places, where they can easily be retrieved and utilize for study or the day program.
The one month online taught program builds the foundation for the matchmake,
support services and entire program, thus adequate planning is required for all
participants to be fully involved and ready to getting fully on board with the
program from the first day.
What to do before you begin study:
8. The Develop entrepreneurial ecosystem program comprises of an online training, an in-depth matchmaking
process and strategic support. Participation on this entrepreneurial program requires sharpness, stamina,
focus and dedication during and after the program.
Most individuals have what it takes to focus, the issue is deciding what to leave out of your schedule for a
particular period of time and give full concentration and attention to another most important task or
opportunity, the other aspect is the ability to stay put on a particular task for very long.
Generally, people try to solve this by multitasking, as humans, we can do two things at the same time, but it
becomes near impossible to concentrate on two tasks simultaneously. Switching cost is the price paid for
multitasking or switching intermittently and that takes precious time out of a planned day schedule.
No one time solution exist in resolving minds that wander during important repetitive action, the idea is to
decipher what you should be doing at any time, this is very individualistic, as everyone is unique in their
ways and must figure out a way to control their concentration level.
In the business world, some businesses have been successful in using Buffett, simple 3-step productivity
strategy, this tested and trusted method, help you quickly do away with activities or tasks that are not
immediately required to make you succeed or get you to your required destination, instead you prioritize a
work plan on the most important action or activity to undertake and you implement/ concentrate on it, till
you complete it successful.
Now that you understand the importance of good study posture and relaxing whilst studying, the next thing
is learning how to remove distraction and finally, a reward system is necessary, once you succeed in pushing
through planned tasks, this involves giving yourself a treat, like a healthy reward for your gift, food, movie
or go out to visit friends. Again, prioritize your reward system, do not overdo it, small reward for small task
and big rewards for major tasks.
Be fully immersed into the program:
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when the value of doing something else outweighs the value of working on an important study
project, then you have successfully put off action or put off until tomorrow.
If partaking in a month training can be perceived as boring, or hard and we quickly make an
excuse to not follow through then we need to think hard and design counter – measures for
putting things off or procrastinating. First, we can start by giving a higher value to the month
trainee program, whilst tagging other things that will not get us through to the completion of
the month training as distraction or less irrelevant tasks.
Other practical ways of getting things on track, includes: Making notes of the course topics
and be prepared to contribute during the online program and ask questions, You will have
people from diverse background as colleagues, so it’s a time to garner knowledge, learn and
get exposed.
Gather adequate research about your community and proposed business venture you are
certain will be viable for your environment, this will help fast track the match making process
between you and social entrepreneurs on our platform. The most important part of the process
is getting mentally prepared for the field work in getting everything to make sense. No cause
for worries, we are here to support for three years or till you get a business deal signed up.
Finally review your goals at the beginning of the training module, during then matchmaking
process and after the support period and when a deal has been signed up.
What if I just keep putting things off:
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Effective Learning Strategies (Time Management)
Determine your value and priorities and set goals
for your entrepreneurship journey.
Monitor and Self-access your day-day goals and
make necessary modifications.
Before commencing the B&C program, make sure
you have a plan (It could be a short, medium- and
long-term plan on how you intend to carry through
the program and achieve objectives). Again, stay
focused and have time limits.
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Design a meaningful plan that you intend using in
achieving personal goal from the program.
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Keep learning, networking and get immersed in
the entrepreneurial program, remember to commit
yourself to the Kaizen philosophy.
Monitor your work activities and time and prepare a
SWOT analysis of social, economic, and/or
environmental venture you would like to implement
in your community.
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- Get accustomed to the month’s program schedule, have a clear understanding of the program’s intent,
ask questions always, that is the only way to learn.
- Familiarize yourself with the course module, identify what you need to understand in making the
program a success for you.
- Prepare to take lots of notes during the online training program. To be an active learner, taking notes in
every online course, one on one session, matchmaking process and additional support process will help
to you to be more retentive, better focused and become a successful entrepreneur.
- Get active on the B&C slack community forum, network, make friends, learn from others, get feedback
on questions, or projects you intend creating for your community, more importantly form partnership
with entrepreneurs from diverse field, communities, and continents.
- Be proactive, remember on your one-on – one session is the time to discuss what business you would
like to partner on our platform for your community.
- Be detailed and complete accurately the marketing plan workbook and get ready to learn all your
options for finding qualified buyers.
How the online program will work for you:
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Tips on Listening, Note taking, and using visual organizers.
1. Listening with questions in your mind or written on paper will help you to stay focused.
2. Note taking ensures vital information are recorded and stored for further analysis or use.
3. Active listening in class session helps you pinpoint questions and ask when it’s time to get clarity in class session, you can also invariably
compile and send via mail to the trainer or post on the B&C slack community for further discussion and analysis.
4. Get as much information written or typed, document and summarize
5. Review PowerPoint notes shortly after every online session, this helps you to be able to interpret and fully understand every module session.
6. Review notes in the best possible ways, use flash cards, evaluate, and clarify information received.
7. If you are a visual person, the best way is to use graphic organizers to show relationships between concepts, this could be through graphs or tree
chart, using visual organizers helps creates a deeper level, of understanding and make the information completely yours.
8. In concluding this part of the orientation, always plan ahead, develop a schedule for completing each steps of this process.
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How do I know which community project to engage or participate?
- Things needed in your community
The most conclusive way of finding out what is truly required in your community is by engaging with people that live in your neighborhood or your proposed
locality. This involves having high level interaction with stakeholder’s resident in that community, you can kick off the process by interacting with friends,
getting to understand their plight about social, economic, and environmental issues in the community.
If you intend to get a wide view of suggestion and opinion, you can setup a community suggestion drive, network and discuss with friends, neighbors, local
government officials, non-profit associations and get a comprehensive outlook.
After discussing and identifying the most pressing and challenging issues, the next step is to conduct an elaborate research, find out more, how did it all
occur, how has it been addressed previously, Use the five whys analogy, unravel the root cause problems, this make it easier to get to the core or essential part
of the issue and develop a sustainable remedy or business venture to tackle it and give succor to the community.
- What are your strengths.
Now take a quick stock and find out what abilities and resources are required in securing a sustainable business venture or solution in solving identified
community issue.
Be sincere with yourself, write down your answers to skills, resources, partnership and human resource required, but be rest assured that this program is
designed purposely to help people like you and others in getting trained, matchmake with successful established business and social entrepreneurs with
ventures, like the ones you seek to create in your community, that are globally recognized and that can help you solve your community problems and finally
get prepared to be supported for three years or when you get a business deal secured.
The three years support will help you as an entrepreneur; identify the project, develop a plan,
Recruit volunteers, make a budget, make a timeline, raise funds, get publicity, partner with a social entrepreneur, partner with us and get the business done.
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Practice the Kaizen Principles
The art of remembering and continuous improvement
Bring Kaizen into your everyday activities or into this training or learning process, you will be surprised
at how big an impact small changes can make and how the culture of continuous improvement can help
you to thrive.
The use of Kaizen approach brings about Improved commitment and Improved retention in day-day
activities and planning. You immediately get a fill of satisfaction and engagement to tasks, to truly
achieve all these you must first be interested in whatever your doing, this helps you remember things
learnt during the training, one-on-one discussion, business matchmaking and support.
To build up your interest level and remember things learnt and practice continuous improvement, the
following below should be adhered to:
- Be prepared to learn, go a step further and write down your reasons why you need to learn and take
a further step in designing your reasons and goals.
- Get a buddy or a partner in progress on the B&C slack platform to keep learning, reviewing
information obtained in the online course, network and keep improving.
- Be enthusiastic, read more, research often and practice Kaizen
- Give back to humanity, share your knowledge with colleagues from around the world on the B&C
and slack platform.
- Design your learning specific to you.
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Get your rhythm for remembering things
The first most important thing is to develop a process that involves the ability to focus on the task at hand while ignoring distractions.
Theory of attention suggests ways distractions can be screened out and help you focus better and remember things, Apps like focus@will and
ommwriter are available to improve attention span and stabilize one’s brain and mind concentration.
Having said all this a key factor to remembering things is having a positive attitude and being optimistic and say to yourself, I have the capacity and
ability to remember things.
To stay attentive in an online class, you can:
- Ask questions or jots things down to research later.
- Use a concentration check sheet to keep yourself focus.
- Use a rubber band on your waist and snap it.
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Increase your basic knowledge before hand
Getting a good grasp or knowledge about a particular subject depends largely on a great degree on how much you already know about the
subject. The more you increase your basic knowledge, the easier it gets to build new knowledge on the subject. Practice! Practice! Practice!
Helps in getting a good grasp and understanding of a subject, passion and/or project.
Taking into consideration your favorite sporting game, recreation or best academic field, this is an area you have a good understanding or you
know much about, the more you know about something, the easier it is to learn more.
The following should be considered when committing to a course program.
- After deciding to enroll in an online training course and before you commence, preview it. Survey the tittle and headings, study the pictures
and charts. Read the summary, familiarize yourself with the modules, think about what you already know about the subject. Try to recall
what you already know. Then proceed your study.
- If you have decided to enroll on an online training course, review the topics that will be discussed and do some research on your own. The
more you know about the subject, the easier it will be to take notes and listen actively to the online presentation.
- Begin with the basic level courses in the subject. Do not skip prerequisites.
- So extra research, visit your local library, search the internet, create ways tom experience the subject.
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Practice Selective information generation
Determine what is most important to you and select those part to study and learn.
The mind can absorb only a certain amount of information at a time. It is near
impossible to learn everything about everything at once. The remedy, then, is to be
selective. Choose what is important. Learn the important things and then build on
the knowledge.
How to successfully choose what is important.
- Study the summary and review questions before and after you read, look for
cues when studying online, use a survey method before you begin, look at
headings, graphics, and bold prints.
- During your online session, listen for verbal clues such as emphasis and
repetition.
- Build yourself up as a subject exert, through focus and commitment to the
online study, constantly ask yourself, now that I have gone through this
module, can I get things in this module done.
- To learn more efficiently, create flash cards for information generation
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Meaningful Information
Normally we remember only five to seven items at a time. Of course, we cannot have a great understanding of the course module.
The way forward is to organize larger blocks of information in ways that are meaningful, we can organize 36 items into six groups of six, using this
method will best help us to manage information more efficiently.
We have some categories that are easy to organize and manage, like: online store, suppliers, sellers, buyers, but other categories are more complicated.
We can work around categories that are not too easy to categorize or itemized through the following:
- Search for meaningful information.
- Alphabetize the list
- Use a mnemonic device, you can use this by taking the first letter of each item and spell a word or make a sentence.
At any given time, do not add more than seven times in any one category.
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Strengthening Neural connections (Recitation)
We learn word counting, we recite, we practice writing alphabets and spell words in
school and this help sharpen our foundation and make us more proficient in doing these
things.
Reciting words helps in different ways, some of the reasons are as follows:
- When you decide to recite something in your own words, the principle of intent
comes into play and this makes you remember and pay more attention.
- When you can explain something in your own words out loud, you understand well
enough and you get immediate feedback.
- Lastly when you hear something this trigger an entirely different part of the brain.
More Tips for Recitation.
- The use of flashcard are an important tool to use in learning
- Always stop and recite when you finish reading a paragraph, when you explain
something out aloud, this helps you learn what your studying easily.
- You can equally find a partner on the B & C slack platform and ask each other
questions and answer out loud.
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Visualize Mentally
Make a mental picture of what needs to be remembered, by visualizing, you use an
entirely different part of the brain than you did by listening or reading. We most
times remember what we see much larger and better, than what we read or hear.
We, therefore, need to try to visualize everything we learn. No matter how abstract.
Determine a way to visualize each new concept.
- Check to see if it can be converted to a chart or graph
- How well can it be illustrated or drawn out?
- Can you make a mental video of the process? Using a mnemonic devise to
learn something can help create a mental video of the word or sentence.
- Can you tell the image of individuals you are studying, if not, make it up?
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Associate familiar things
When you associate facts to be learned with something familiar to you,
memory is increased. By recalling something you already know and making
a link to the brain file, that contains the information, you should be able to
remember new information more efficiently.
Always ask yourself the following:
- Is this like something I already know
- Are the numbers, fact, or concept familiar
- Is the sound familiar
- Can I get to use it for something similar?
- Is there an existing file I can use instead of creating a new one?
- How do you remember things?
Memory principles are interrelated, when you use the principle of
association, you will probably want to use such principles as visualization,
interest, and intent.
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Giving time to absorb materials provided
New information takes time to be understood, short term memory will only hold
five to seven bits of information. We are usually confronted with much
information than we can remember, we must therefore, allow time to absorb such
information. In fact, we must ensure we devise an effective method to absorb
information.
The following are ways to absorb or consolidate information.
- Whilst reading or reviewing or during an online session, we should ensure we
take proper notes.
- When we do not understand a particular statement or point, we should write
down questions.
- Review notes continually
- Have some constructive break in an online training, for example stop after
each paragraph read and write the concept or idea in the margin, this helps
identify and explain the paragraph much more.
- Continually visualize
- Practice recitation
- Crate flash cards
- Formulate and design tests questions.
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Practice Selective information generation
Determine what is most important to you and select those part to study and learn.
The mind can absorb only a certain amount of information at a time. It is near
impossible to learn everything about everything at once. The remedy, then, is to be
selective. Choose what is important. Learn the important things and then build on
the knowledge.
How to successfully choose what is important.
- Study the summary and review questions before and after you read, look for
cues when studying online, use a survey method before you begin, look at
headings, graphics, and bold prints.
- During your online session, listen for verbal clues such as emphasis and
repetition.
- Build yourself up as a subject exert, through focus and commitment to the
online study, constantly ask yourself, now that I have gone through this
module, can I get things in this module done.
- To learn more efficiently, create flash cards for information generation
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Distributed Practice
By using distributed practice, we can optimize our learning, we tend to remember things
at the beginning of a list or study session and things at the end.
For instance, if you remember what you learnt in the first thirty minutes of your study and
you remember what you learnt in the last thirty minutes. Which would be more effective?
Distributed practice allows time for things to consolidate and for you to build a basic
background, it also uses what we know about the nature of short-term memory.
How to use this principle.
- Take a 15-minute break after each hour of study and review what you just learnt,
recycle this procedure every hour.
- Have a scheduled time to study each subject.
- Make use of daylight hours and time that you normally waste.
- Use flash cards
- Make each paragraph of your textbook with a question or label.
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Taking Notes.
Note taking is still the primary means of sorting, organizing, processing and subsequently
learning materials. Getting organized is the best way to deal with large amount of information.
Get a standard size notebook, this will help you to insert pages and rearrange your own notes.
Put a heading and a date on your notes for each day. If you have questions, making notations. If
you do not come across an answer in your readings, then send an email to –
member@brandsandcommunities.com
