46th SEFI Annual Conference: Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Engineering Education Excellence, Date: 2018/09/17 - 2018/09/21, Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Publication date: 2018-09-17
Pages: 589 - 596
ISSN: 978-2-87352-016-8
Publisher: SEFI-European Society for Engineering Education; Brussels

Proceedings of the 46th SEFI Annual Conference 2018

Author:

Berbers, Yolande
Van Hemelrijck, Inge ; Londers, Elsje ; Clark, Robin ; Hussmann, Peter Munkebo ; Järvinen, Hannu-Matti ; Murphy, Mike ; Vigild, Martin Etchells

Abstract:

In 2015, the Faculty of Engineering Science at KU Leuven chose to put more emphasis on Entrepreneurship in the curriculum. A broad definition was used to describe Entrepreneurship: “Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship refers to an individual's ability to turn ideas into action. It includes creativity, innovation and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives” (European Parliament and the Council, 2006, p. 8). Amongst several initiatives to promote entrepreneurship, this paper highlights a new course created to enable students to engage in an entrepreneurial project. For the faculty these initiatives emphasized the need of well-defined criteria to determine whether a project can be considered “entrepreneurial”. Therefore criteria were defined, together with the other faculties of the Science and Technology group, to make a clear difference with other projects offered throughout the curriculum The criteria are based on three main elements: (a) Putting ideas into action, (b) Acquiring resources and (c) Interdisciplinary work. Each of these elements has several sub-criteria. Furthermore, reflection is an important aspect of the projects. This is also a criteria represented in the evaluation. Before the students start their project, they have to list the competences they want to improve throughout the project. In their final report, they have to reflect on these competences.