European business sector pays an ever more increasing attention to competences such as sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. The recommendation 2006/962/EC on key competences for lifelong learning highlighted paramount importance of these key competences for employability, listing sense of initiative and entrepreneurship within the Reference Framework of eight key competences. It refers to an individual's ability to turn ideas into action and it creativity, innovation, effective communication, risk-taking, ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives. The competences related to entrepreneurship play a paramount role in EU neighbouring countries in their development process towards higher performing market economies and convergence with EU economic and social standards, their employers miss these competences in graduates particularly from ICT and engineering, strongly focusing to development of professional technical competencies and not supporting additionally development of different personal, social and organizational competencies (sometimes referred as the "soft skills"). WB countries and Russia in general during the transition processes maintained a high level of resistance to private initiatives, business and entrepreneurship, inherited from former political systems. Many of the youngsters prefer “safe” employment at public enterprises, awareness and appreciation of own entrepreneurship potentials is low.The project aimed at developing, testing, validating and mainstreaming holistic and needs driven open learning modules to promote entrepreneurship competences of ICT and engineering graduates at the interface of academic education and learning in practice business contexts. Competence level of graduates in participating partner countries was researched and regional training needs were identified, based on the recognized gaps the modular, practice-oriented entrepreneurship trainings were developed and introduced to students; validation system comprising a suite of entrepreneurship-related competences descriptions, context-related reference systems to assess and evidence these competences, and an online assessment and validation system based on the proven and tested Level 5 approach were created and related certificates provided to the participating students; this assessment and validation system allows also for transnational exploitation of acquired competences; entrepreneurship training modules and competence validation system were piloted, evaluated and polished later for eventual further improvements, and finally mainstreamed into existing curricula in ICT and engineering programmes.
European business sector pays an ever more increasing attention to competences such as sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. The recommendation 2006/962/EC on key competences for lifelong learning highlights paramount importance of these key competences for employability. These competences related to entrepreneurship play a paramount role in EU neighbouring countries in their development process towards higher performing market economies and convergence with EU economic and social standards, their employers miss these competences in graduates particularly from ICT and engineering. WB countries and Russia in general have a high level of resistance to private initiatives, business and entrepreneurship. Many of the youngsters prefer “safe” employment at public enterprises, awareness and appreciation of own entrepreneurship potentials is low.The project aims at developing, testing, validating and mainstreaming holistic and needs driven open learning modules to promote entrepreneurship competences of ICT and engineering graduates at the interface of academic education and learning in practice business contexts.Competence level of graduates in participating partner countries is researched and regional training needs are identified; modular, practice-oriented entrepreneurship trainings are developed; validation system comprising a suite of entrepreneurship-related competences descriptions, context-related reference systems to assess and evidence these competences, and an online assessment and validation system based on the proven and tested Level 5 approach are created and used; a connection of this assessment and validation system to formal validation and accreditation systems (ECTS) and certification systems (EUROPASS) will be explored to allow for transnational exploitation of acquired competences; entrepreneurship training modules and competence validation system are piloted, evaluated and mainstreamed into existing curricula in ICT and engineering programmes.