The EASIP COMP project aims at reinforcing the entrepreneurship competence among students through workplace learning, in line with the European strategy on this topic. Conceptually E.A.S.I.P. COMP puts a special emphasis on further strengthening entrepreneurship as one of the key competencies in higher education curricula and provides more effective work-based opportunities to acquire entrepreneurship competency among university students. The project will increase labor market relevance of learning provision and qualifications and reinforce the links between education, training and the world of work, because the entrepreneurship training model will include close project-based cooperation between universities and local companies. The guiding principle of the project is to provide evidence based experiential teaching models to ensure long-term sustainable cooperation between universities and local business organisations. We will do that by implementing an experiential workplace-based model of teaching entrepreneurship in higher education in order to facilitate more frequent and quality cooperation between higher education institutions and local business organizations. The main objectives of the project are to: - Introduce a new practical entrepreneurship model by working on real life cases in business and industry - Deliver new entrepreneurship training materials for teachers and students to support work-based learning about entrepreneurship - Equip university teachers with skills for mentoring and guiding students towards entrepreneurship - Support cooperation between higher education institutions and local businesseswith the aim of offering more experience in developing entrepreneurial competencies of university students - Strengthen cooperation between higher education institutions and local businesses for creative solutions and product development by joint work between students, teachers and local businesses Project outputs will be strongly practical oriented, offering comprehensive support for long-term impacts on experiential teaching of entrepreneurship. Specifically, the outcomes are the following: 1. An online entrepreneurship course and digital character (software). A set of tools, games and activities will be built in order to make lessons more experiential and the whole approach will be built on great user experience.The first part is a long process of research and analysis about entrepreneurship competences among university students. The second part consists in developing the entrepreneurship course: it will include activities for students, description of activities, material needed, recommendations for teachers, user-friendly explanations of theory, as necessary for students. 2. Video-compendium of prototypes of business ideas created by students. The video-compendium will collect all students’ workplace business projects developed. It will present all projects prepared by students in a business environment, showing prototypes developed by students and a short presentation of all involved local companies. In addition, the project will produce also intangible results such as: - Increasing knowledge of university students about entrepreneurship, improving their employability - Training university teachers in a new approach of working with entrepreneurship competences and with the world of business - Increasing skills of entrepreneurship trainers by working with university teachers and supporting students in workplace learning - Increasing cooperation between universities and local businesses in work-based projects - Increasing internalization of the partner organizations The project will have effective impacts such as: increased entrepreneurial mindset and employability of university students; increased ability of teachers in mentoring students for training courses on entrepreneurship; reinforced cooperation between universities and local companies in implementing work-based project for students; increased knowledge among higher education institutions and policy makers of practical approach in teaching entrepreneurship. The EASIP COMP project results will be sustainable; methodological approach and intellectual outputs are flexible and adaptable and can be easily implemented in higher education organizations across Europe.
The objectives of the EASIP COMP project were to: • Introduce a new practical entrepreneurship model by working on real life cases in business and industry • Deliver new entrepreneurship training material for teachers and students to support work-based learning about entrepreneurship • Equip university teachers with skills for mentoring and guiding students towards entrepreneurship • Support cooperation between higher education institutions and local businesses with the aim of offering more experience for developing entrepreneurial competencies of university students • Strengthen cooperation between higher education institutions and local businesses for creative solutions and product development by joint work between students, teachers and local businesses The transnational cooperation, with our different backgrounds, expertise and experiences, was of special importance to the project. The basic idea was to build a model that, inspired by the European recommendation on entrepreneurship and implemented and tested in different geographical contexts, can overcome geographical barriers and potential stereotypes that still negatively impact on the recognition of entrepreneurship as an essential competence.
The starting point of our project was the EntreComp definition of entrepreneurship: “Entrepreneurship is when you act upon opportunities and ideas and transform them into value for others. The value that is created can be financial, cultural, or social”. Before writing the application, the partnership conducted secondary data analysis as well as interviews with some university teachers, and we identified a number of needs that we wanted to address in this project: • Students commonly have a narrow definition of entrepreneurship, limited to starting and running a business. In line with efforts of the EU we wanted to promote a wider perception of entrepreneurship that focuses on the skills of EntreComp. This way students learn to develop entrepreneurial skills like seeing opportunities and being proactive, being creative, working in teams, etc. These skills foster students’ personal and professional development, as well as improve their employability. • We wanted to promote experiential learning and develop comprehensive didactic materials to teaching entrepreneurship. • We saw the need to follow an interdisciplinary approach that highlights entrepreneurship as a transversal competence across disciplines.