Tech-STER aims to enhance (international) entrepreneurial and soft skills and attitude of teachers and students in HE by creating an entrepreneurial dimension to technical education and strengthening the local and European (industry) network of HE institutions. This offers a solution to EU wide unemployment by enabling young people to create their own employment and become successful entrepreneurs that look beyond country borders. The materials will be easy to implement in existing education, where the primary goal is not specifically to teach how to become an entrepreneur. Tech-STER has a strong added value at EU level, as it encourages cooperation of different nationalities, cultures and fields of education. The lack of entrepreneurial behaviour of technical students has been recognised all across Europe, HEIs have a common issue to work on. By collaborating internationally, it’s possible to gather best practices, examples and experiences EU-wide. As the project focuses on the entrepreneurial and soft skills, it is needed to explain both, taking into attention that soft skills are part of entrepreneurial skills. Entrepreneurial skills, in the context of the tech-STER project, are not primarily meant to start a business, but for the students to use in the future work places. So in this case it is more about trying something new or making the process better to enhance efficiency or increase results while working for an employer. These skills also contribute to the process of starting own business. These skills, could be problem solving and analytical skills, but also influencing skills. Soft skills are complementary to hard skills (which are needed for a specific job) and involve living and working with other people. Soft skills are related to communication, teamwork, leadership and organizational skills. There are different academic disciplines and corporate cultures which have different terminologies for each of the mentioned concepts (Jafari-Marandi, R., Smith, B. K., Burch, R. F., & Vick, S. C., 2019). The need for the tech-STER project is there, as more and more jobs require soft skills from their employers. When taking the technical aspect, several studies have shown that there is a need of a good balance between technical competences and non-technical skills for the recruitment of professionals in the Information Technology field (Fernández-Sanz, L., Villalba, M. T., Medina, J. A., & Misra, S., 2017). Food Scientists and Technologists (FS&T) for example, do not only need the technical skills to meet the needs of a globalised food and drink sector, but also the generic or intuitive soft skills (Flynn, K. Ho, P., Vieira M., Pittia, P. & Dalla Rosa, M., 2017). It shows through the fact that when the European FS&T employers brainstormed about the ideal employee skills, 76% of these skills consisted of soft skills (Flynn, K., Wahnstrom, E., Popa, M., Ruiz-Bejarano, B., & Quintas, M. A. C., 2013). Tech-STERs has three major objectives: 1) Strengthening the technical education already in place in HE and enhancing competences of HE teachers in teaching entrepreneurial behaviour and skills. 2) Equipping HE students with the necessary mind-set, skills and competences they need to succeed in their future careers, based on entrepreneurial and soft skills. 3) Raising the awareness, motivation and knowledge level of important HE stakeholders on how to embed an entrepreneurial dimension into the existing curricula. Even though the need for entrepreneurial and soft skills programmes in education is clear, no programmes are in place that embed the promotion and development of entrepreneurial behaviour and soft skills into existing technical educational programmes. The innovative and pioneering tech-STER project will change this situation by exploring which tools and materials could be easily implemented in existing technical educational programmes, without offering a full programme. All students should address these skills and competences, not only the students that consciously choose e.g. a minor in entrepreneurship or a full education on entrepreneurship. The tech-STER will develop 5 main outputs: • research on the need to include soft skills in current curricula and identification of needed soft skills • teacher toolbox to promote (international) entrepreneurial behaviour/soft skills • teacher guide on how to embed entrepreneurship tools into the classroom • road map to embed the tech-STER approach throughout the whole institute • online community to get in touch with like-minded people The project will have an immense impact on all target groups and the participating partner organisations. Having on board supporters of great importance in the educational world, we expect a high ‘market’ penetration of the tech-STER programme during and after the project has finished. High quality tech-STER products combined with strong dissemination efforts by partners ensure that universities all over Europe benefit from the resulta of the project.
The main objective of TechSter was to enhance (international) entrepreneurial and soft skills and attitudes of teachers and students in higher education by strengthening the entrepreneurial dimension of technical education and strengthening the local and European (industry) network of higher education institutions. Tech-STERs had three major objectives: (1) Strengthening the technical education already in place in HE and enhancing competences of HE teachers in teaching entrepreneurial behaviour and soft skills. (2) Equipping HE students with the necessary mind-set, skills and competences they need to succeed in their future careers, based on entrepreneurial and soft skills. (3) Raising the awareness, motivation and knowledge level of important HE stakeholders on how to embed an entrepreneurial dimension into the existing curricula.
Professional life requires future professionals to have both strictly professional competences and the ability to work in complex, multicultural working environments, whether employed or self-employed. In technical education, little attention is paid to soft competences and entrepreneurial behaviour of students. Teachers provide a fairly traditional education with high quality content, but little attention is paid to 21st century skills. Entrepreneurial skills and soft skills, are a necessary complement to the technical competences acquired during higher education. In this respect, they are not understood as preparation for starting a business, but as competences used by students in future professional tasks in general. It is therefore more about the ability to find new opportunities, to make entrepreneurial attempts to create something new, which result in process improvements and increased efficiency or increased performance when working for an employer. There is a need within technical higher education in Europe to increase the training of elements of entrepreneurial competence and soft skills. Students thus have the opportunity to use their technical competences more effectively in a modern working environment.