Entrepreneurship Student Q&A

Entrepreneurship is newly offered at Newstead College and delivered through the University Connections Program. The unit is taught on site at Newstead College, with the lectures, resources and assessments written by James Riggall, Senior Industry Fellow for the College of Business and Economics at the University of Tasmania. It’s a fantastic opportunity for students to experience a university unit and complete it over the course of a year, instead of within just one university semester.

The 2025 class are doing an excellent job! Here, Year 12 students James, Jespah and Matilda, and Year 11 student Charlotte, share more about the course and the tools they are learning.

What does the Entrepreneurship course involve?

James: It involves identifying, explaining and elaborating on problems, and finding solutions for them. You go really in depth about your problem: who’s got this problem, when do they have this problem, all those sorts of questions. Then we go in depth on the solution and how it’s going to work. How do we make money off it? Or is it going to be charitable? And also learning the process of how to think about this – so critical thinking, and the thought process of problem solving.

Charlotte: It’s about learning to think in a different way.

What are you working on?

James: We have two major assessments that are assessed by UTAS. Our other assessments are assessed internally. We have one in the middle of the year where we go very in-depth on a problem and design materials to explain it. We’ve just been working on a journey map, which is a timeline of events for doing a certain task. Mine was from when you get the fuel warning light in your car, to leaving the petrol station after you’ve fuelled up. All the steps along the way are things like driving there, getting stuck in traffic, parking, filling up your car, going to the shop and buying a coffee because it smells lovely, then getting annoyed at the price of fuel. We outline all these processes so we can find the areas that people are dissatisfied with, and identify business solutions for them.

Charlotte: It’s about helping a whole range of people, and thinking about people who aren’t yourself.

Why did you choose to study Entrepreneurship?

Matilda: I started Business 2 last year … Entrepreneurship offers that business side of things. I also studied a UTAS course last year and it has a learning structure that’s different from the other classes. You can do it from home, you can do it in class, and you have a lot of support.

James: It’s nice to see how they run a university course, because this is very lecture-based. We watch a lot of lectures and use the university online learning platform, MyLO.

I know some people came into this course because it’s got a very high ATAR score as well.

Charlotte: Learning new things is always fun. It seemed like something that would give me skills for my other classes, even if I wasn’t planning on becoming an entrepreneur.

Jespah: The fact that it is a very self-directed class is what brought me to it. And it’s a course where I can say hey, I’ve learned this pretty general skill in design. I can apply this to all of these different things, and that really helps later on.

What are your pathway plans?

James: I’m looking for a career in the police force, so the problem solving aspects of this will look very desirable for that. You can apply those problem solving and ideating things to a lot of police force subjects, especially if I want to go on to an upper management, inspector sort of position later on.

Charlotte: I want to go into law, and I like the idea of thinking outside the box, learning how to pitch things, and trying to do something from a different point of view.

Jespah: Possibly game design. If I were to go down the game design route, that requires a lot of problem solving, coming up with unique ideas and finding a niche in a market.

Matilda: I’ve been considering law, and another one is agriculture. To have those problem solving skills and be able to find the problem and create a solution, the class really helps with that. To have that skill is really good because not a lot of people are equipped with that.

Has anything surprised you about the course?

Charlotte: It’s very self-directed. You’re allowed to have responsibility for yourself and that takes a whole load of pressure off, as you can just work at your own pace and do things how you want to. All the resources are there, so there’s not someone you have to listen to. You can just tick away at your own speed.

James: I really liked that I don’t have to put up with exams again, but I didn’t really know what to expect. But it’s definitely the self-directedness and the fact that I can do it whenever I want.

How are you assessed?

James: We have to do pitches as part of our major assessments.

Matilda: We have to find our problem, explain what our problem is, who experiences that problem and why, and then create a four-minute video as part of our first portfolio.

Charlotte: We’ve really got to justify why it’s an important problem and persuade everyone that it should be solved.

What are you looking forward to most?

Jespah: I’m really looking forward to coming up with the solution to the problems we have. I can’t wait to see what everyone else does and what I do in the end, what changes I make. I think that’s going to be interesting to see.