An Experiential Learning Approach To Teaching Social Entrepreneurship, Triple Bottom Line, And Sustainability: Modifying And Extending Practical Organizational Behavior Education (PROBE)

When teaching social entrepreneurship and sustainability, using an experiential learning approach can be more effective than a traditional lecture approach. Social and environmental entrepreneurs often have a deep passion for their work that is important for students to develop early in their careers. Experiential learning enables students to create and experience this passion for themselves, thereby preparing them with the motivational and emotional resources they may need to be successful in the future. We introduce Practical Organizational Behavior Education (PROBE) as one way of helping students develop this passion. PROBE was originally developed as a service-learning project for an undergraduate course in organizational behavior at a very small, private university. However, in this manuscript, we show how PROBE can be modified and extended to effectively teach business students about triple bottom line concepts, sustainability, and social entrepreneurship at the undergraduate and MBA levels within a large, public university system. We provide practical suggestions for instructors interested in implementing this approach in a broad variety of settings.