09 March, 2016

A seminar aimed at Entrepreneurship Educators took place last Wednesday, 9th of March, at Cork Institute of Technology’s Bishoptown Campus, as part of CIT’s Innovation Week, which every year hosts a number of events aiming to promote innovation and entrepreneurship amongst staff members, students and the wider community.

The seminar, ‘Assessing Entrepreneurial Learning Outcomes”, supported by the CIT Teaching & Learning Unit Development Fund attracted participants from Finland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Spain, Vietnam and Ireland.  Ms Orla Flynn Vice-President for External Affairs in her opening address welcomed participants and encouraged all to “exploit the multicultural, multidisciplinary opportunity to share experiences and to explore collaborative or innovative assessment tools to enhance the teaching and learning experience for the entrepreneurial student” 

The key note speaker was Mr. Martin Lackéus, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Martin, a teacher and PhD candidate in Entrepreneurial Education, founded his own business in 2001, working as a CEO for eight years of a fast-growing IT company in the transportation industry, and since 2014 also runs a research-based IT company focusing on how to apply mobile app based ICT in formative assessment through education-based private social media. Mr Lackeus presented a fascinating evidence based view on how individuals develop entrepreneurial competencies in educational environments linked with society through value creation processes. More importantly, given theme under discussion, he outlined how such processes can be assessed and evaluated.

Also, on the day, the NEAR (National Entrepreneurship Assessment Review) project was officially launched. The project, which is funded through the National Forum for Teaching and Learning and led by the Campus Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Network (CEEN) under the chair of Dr Breda Kenny, aims to complete the first national review of the current assessment practices of entrepreneurship educators across all disciplines and faculties in Higher Education in Ireland. A session with graduates from entrepreneurship programmes brought the day to a close and provided an insight into the student perspective on assessment practice in entrepreneurship education and was a key feature of the seminar. “While the seminar focused on entrepreneurship programmes, the learning, discussion and insights from the students have wider application across any discipline or field of study” said Dr Kenny.

Not happy to stand still when it comes to entrepreneurship education, CIT are making preparations to host the premier European research conference in the field, the 3E Conference - ECSB Entrepreneurship Education Conference in May 2017. Previous venues have included Aarhus University in Denmark and the 2016 conference will be hosted by the University of Leeds. Organised by the Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence at CIT the conference will attract researchers and educators from around the world. The event will offer an exclusive, and engaging, opportunity for participants to debate and exchange their experiences of the major challenges and advances in enterprise education.