Teaching Entrepreneurship for Sustainability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Teaching Entrepreneurship for Sustainability

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project Teaching Entrepreneurship for Sustainability aims at implementing sustainability in a comprehensive way in entrepreneurship education. This goes two ways: involve sustainability more strongly in the entrepreneurship courses and “marry” sustainability with the entrepreneurship approach in one module. It should create a better understanding of in which ways and dimensions sustainability and entrepreneurship are compatible, and in which ways and dimensions they are not. Additionally, the project needs to contribute to the quality of teaching in sustainability and entrepreneurship education. Furthermore, the project aims at developing a working approach which students can adopt in order to achieve sustainable results in a highly uncertain and changing environment. This work approach focuses on soft skills development for students as future actors of sustainable entrepreneurship, as there is not a “syllabus” to follow in reality. This includes re-gearing entrepreneurial processes to a variety of contexts and situations and embedding uncertainty into the learning process.

There are in total 3 participants involved in this project, all with their own courses and programmes in entrepreneurship:
1. Uppsala University (Campus Gotland), Sweden
Course in master’s programme ‘Sustainable Destination Development’: Introduction to Entrepreneurship in the tourism industry
2. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Campus Fryslan), The Netherlands
Master’s programme Sustainable Entrepreneurship
3. Nord University, Norway
Courses in the bachelor’s programme ‘Business Administration’: Knowledge based business development and Sustainable Business Development

All three universities will be actively involved in the development of the project and each university is responsible for one workpackage. The project is divided into three workpackages, consisting of various goals, activities and outputs, which follow up on each other in a chronological order. This means that the work being done in each workpackage contributes to the following workpackage and the goals, activities and outputs of these workpackages.

WORKPACKAGE 1: MAPPING AND SYSTEMATIZING CURRENT PRACTICES
In workpackage 1 the focus lies on gaining a thorough understanding of the current available approaches to teaching sustainability in entrepreneurship education. This will provide the required knowledge base for developing a module that teaches sustainable entrepreneurship in an integrated way.
> Responsible: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
> Result: Report on Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education

WORKPACKAGE 2: DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHING MODULE
With the knowledge base created in workpackage 1 and the views and feedback of experts and stakeholders collected through a LTT-activity and multiplier events, the new teaching module for higher education will be developed.
> Responsible: Uppsala University
> Result: Curriculum for Teaching Module

WORKPACKAGE 3: IMPLEMENTATION AND ASSESSMENT
This workpackage consists of two elements, namely to train the trainers and to develop assessment tools. To successfully implement the module, firstly the teachers active in the relevant programmes and courses of the partner universities need to be trained in the course content. The assessment tools will be developed in order to measure the success and quality of the teaching module.
> Responsible: Nord University
> Result: Train the Trainer Guideline & Assessment Tools for Teaching Module

The work being done in the workpackages leads to the aim of this project: to develop a new teaching module for sustainable entrepreneurship education at the partner universities and other universities in Europe and the world. Furthermore, they contribute to the fulfillment of the following objectives:
1. To provide an accessible framework on available approaches to integrating sustainability in entrepreneurship education
2. To provide universities with an evidence-based teaching module on ‘sustainable entrepreneurship’, applicable in different higher educational contexts
3. To provide students with motivation, capabilities and opportunities to become agents of change and active actors in sustainable entrepreneurship
4. To provide educators with tools and guidelines in order to teach an integrated ‘sustainable entrepreneurship’ module
5. To provide educators with the tools to monitor and evaluate the quality of the ‘sustainable entrepreneurship’ module

The project impact is as follows:
Students will have an increased awareness of entrepreneurial solutions to sustainability challenges and will have gained an entrepreneurial mindset.
Teachers will gain experience of teaching sustainability principles and entrepreneurship in an integrated way.
Local enterprise incubators will have increased long-term opportunities to be involved in the entrepreneurship education.

The activities of the project will continue as permanent additions to existing operations.

Project Website

https://www.teserasmus.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 176010 Eur

Project Coordinator

UPPSALA UNIVERSITET & Country: SE

Project Partners

• RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN
• NORD UNIVERSITET