To create more employment & prosperity we must engage young people in delivering the key social & economic aims of boosting productivity, increasing competition & innovation. All young people will need to develop entrepreneurial skills that will make them more innovative and creative. But how do we make entrepreneurial learning attractive to them? This project and its partnership are designed to: • get to grips with enterprise skills by identifying and describing their importance for both employees in a business and the entrepreneurs who want to start or continue to run a successful business. • meet employers’ increasing demand for intrapreneurial employees - an innovative & entrepreneurial attitude, from all employees in addition to functional expertise & artisanal skills. • produce a competence matrix , a new European Framework of Enterprise Skills 2.0 that will underpin a new & different enterprise game by undertaking a skills audit & by employing VQTS methodology, a proven ECVET instrument. The project's main product, A Serious Game, will simulate realistic scenarios and engage the learner in a self -development course that can be played at several levels and addresses both employability skills and enterprise skills. A Serious Game will also offer the opportunity to play the game in an international environment testing the student's flexibility to manage different cultural challenges and language difficulties. The project's new products will: • have a wider application & appeal, targeting and developing enterprising employees & freelancers as well as potential entrepreneurs and preparing them to act in the global economy; • focus on the creative interplay of methodological expertise, self-competence and social competences; • develop the software produced by IT-Workz which is successfully employed in many Dutch colleges; • reflect the high tolerances entrepreneurs have to uncertainties in the environment & of course to take advantage of them; & • also have an interactive dimension of competition that promotes unpredictability, conflict with other competitors as well as the need to come to a decision within a team. A handbook containing learning assignments will accompany A Serious game which will be available in the five partnership languages. An international version of the handbook will encourage and allow individuals to play the enterprise game and compete against players from other countries. Coordinated by ROC Midden Nederland, a college with extensive expertise in transnational project management, the consortium consists of leading training organisations from 5 countries, all with experience of international projects & enterprise education. It contains the educational knowledge and technical expertise to design and produce an innovative new game , achieve significant impact and disseminate widely through existing channels of communication. Each partner college has involved a relevant junior project partner. The project will call upon the marketing teams from two leading international colleges to direct dissemination & exploitation activities & will engage an experienced adviser for the management of quality & evaluation.
Context and background of the project This project aimed to engage young people in acquiring s the skills to deliver the key social and economic goals of boosting productivity, increasing competition and innovation. It focused on young people who need to develop entrepreneurial skills in order to make them more innovative and creative. Attractive entrepreneurial learning materials in the form of a serious game was the main product. Objectives The project and its partnership wanted to: • get to grips with enterprise skills by identifying and describing their importance for both employees in a business and the entrepreneurs who want to start or continue to run a successful business. • meet employers’ increasing demand for intrapreneurial employees - an innovative and entrepreneurial attitude, from all employees in addition to functional expertise and artisanal skills. • produce a competence matrix , a new European Framework of Enterprise Skills 2.0 that will underpin a new and different enterprise game by undertaking a skills audit and by employing VQTS methodology, a proven ECVET instrument. Partnership The partnership consisted of 11 partners with distinction between senior and junior partners. The senior partners were ROC Midden Nederland (promotor), Gobierno de Navarra, BFR Ober-Österreich, Chamber of Commerce Hodonin and Cambridge Regional College. The partner were responsible for the development of the framework and the serious game. The senior partners were supported by junior partners in several areas. SWO and The Gazelle Group mainly supported the development of the Competence Framework form their knowledge of business and entrepreneurial education. IT-Workz and Navreme Boheme were experts in game development and were mainly concerned with the serious game. Kent & McGill supported the overall development as an external evaluator and quality control manager. Overall the partnership had all the necessary competences to produce the required results at a high level. Description of main activities The first phase was to develop a competence framework based on the latest scientific knowledge and the demands of employers. Initially all relevant information was gathered through a skills audit which included desk research and a online questionnaire filled in by more than 80 employers. A selection of competences and development stages was then derived using the VQTS model. This framework was then designed in an attractive graphic. The second phase was to build the serious game called SIMBIZ to take account of the main enterprise skills identified in the research. The game was built from scratch and extensively tested with students. The third phase was to produce and design a teacher’s handbook that would assist those wishing to use the serious game. This manual contains a number of suggested activities and plans for using the game. These three phases have run concurrently with a wide range of dissemination activities within each country that have generated interest in SimBiz and helped through feedback in the development of the project’s products. Results and impact attained The partnership has delivered the products to the standards set out at the beginning of the project. The Competence Framework stands tall in the comparisons we have made with the very latest research into enterprise skills that has been published towards the end of the project period. It is well researched, thorough in scope and strong in design. It is practical as well being very accessible for reference. In excess of 100 people have had the opportunity to examine and comment on it and it has been mainstreamed into institutions within and outwith the partnership. The SimBiz Game, the project's main product, fulfills our initial goal. It simulates realistic scenarios and engages the learner in a self -development course that can be played at several levels and addresses both employability skills and enterprise skills. Given that it has been designed from first principles, it is well designed and sophisticated. Significant interest in SimBiz has been shown at presentations at conferences in the partner countries, including EfVET 2016. Longer term benefits Even though it is difficult to forecast the longer term benefit it is clear that within the partnership (international) entrepreneurial education has received a substantial boost. International entrepreneurial competences have been integrated into courses and the game is used by many students, not just in the partnership but also outside of the partnership. Especially the framework has the potential to become the leading instrument for the integration international entrepreneurial competences in vocational education in Europe.