Fostering student engagement in virtual entrepreneurship education environments

To address calls to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted entrepreneurship education, this paper reflects on four different teaching modalities used in a virtual learning environment. The aim is to provide further insights into the different means by which students engage and interact in online classes. Findings indicate that while competence-based modalities seemed to stimulate class interaction more than supply-based modalities, over half of the class remained ‘passive’ or ‘detached’ from the virtual learning environment. Students were found to have either belonging, competence, or autonomy motives driving their engagement in different teaching modalities. The paper concludes by proposing hybrid-based approaches to class delivery can meet the varying student engagement motives in virtual entrepreneurship education environments.