COMPETENCE IN WORKING LIFE COOPERATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION (3 CR) 

Competence goals: 

17. You understand the importance of cooperation between an educational institution and working life. 

 18. You understand the importance of entrepreneurship education as part of a teacher’s job. 

 

For this topic, I co-operated with my co-student Majid. We approached this topic in two parts. First, I gave a brief introduction into Entrepreneurship education in vocational and higher education and also presented the real life examples from Seinäjoki UoAS. Following this Majid went deeper into the subject and discussed the importance of this from teacher’s and students’ point of view.

Entrepreneurial landscape in Finland

As a pretask we asked students to complete a short quiz  on the entrepreneurial landscape in Finland.

What we wanted everybody to understand is that most of the Finnish companies are very small, nearly 90% of all companies have less than 5 employees. This obviously has implications for our curriculums as usually in small companies workers will have wider roles than in large companies. In other words, you will have to have skills and attitude to do more than what might be your core expertise.

Second take from the quiz: Finland has an aging population and qualified staff is a scarse commodity now and even more in the future. This also shows in the entrepreneurial statistics with the average entrepreneur being over 50. This is significant for the whole society but especially in the rural areas where small companies provide communities with goods and services. We need to encourage young people into taking over these companies in order to keep also rural areas live.

Entrepreneurial education

So this short background introduction took us into the topic of entrepreneurial education. One might think that is something that is though in the business school but in the context of vocational and higher education, we are talking of a much wider thing. In summary:





Picture 1: Definition of entrepreneurial education in teaching. Source OAMK Entrepreneurial badges.

So, what kind of skills and attitude are we talking about. We did a short brainstorming on this subject and asked students What skills and attitude does an entrepreneur need? What we learned from this exercise is that it is now that easy to separate skills from attitude.

The government of Finland has given some guidelines for entrepreneurial education and this is what they suggest.

  • Skills relate to proactive project management (involving skills such as planning, organising, managing, leadership and delegation, analysing, communicating, de-briefing and evaluating and recording), and the ability to work both as an individual and collaboratively in teams. The judgement to identify one’s strengths and weaknesses, and to assess and take risks as and when warranted is essential.
  • An entrepreneurial attitude is characterised by initiative, pro-activity, independence and innovation in personal and social life, as much as at work. It also includes motivation and determination to meet objectives, whether personal goals or aims held in common with others, and/or at work.


How can we nurture those skills and attitudes?

Picture 2: Learning environments supporting entrepreneurial skills and attitude. Source: Valtioneuvosto.fi

Central is that we have learning environments in place that support students’

- learning through their own activity

- simulated or real-world setting  is used in teaching and there will be interaction directly with entrepreneurs

- teaching is focused on problem-solving

- the learner has the support of various expert organisations

-        the teacher’s role an organiser, guide and learning environment planner


The bottom line here is that Teachers need to use their educational and working life networks to develop students entrepreneurial mindset.

 

Entrepreneurial education in practice, case SeAMK

Ok, so how to do this in real life? At SeAMK Entrepreneurial attitude is actually mentioned in our vision. And this impacts both us teachers, other staff, as well as students. For teachers this means independence when it comes to pedagogical choices. That said, we also have plenty of learning environments in place to help teachers in their task and nurture our students with the necessary skills and attitude to survive future working life. Some statistics to back up the need for this work:

•        Majority of the university and vocational students in Finland end up working for SMEs.

•        5% of SeAMK’s students end up working as an entrepreneur.

 

I will give you a quick peak into SeAMK’s offering on entrepreneurial education. This is quite an extensive list (even though not full). First the backbone that is offered for all of the degree students:


Picture 3: SeAMK's offering on entrepreneurial education on basic level.

 

How to bring working life into the classroom

Below the different learning environments that srudents can take advantage while studying at SeAMK:

  • In the SeAMKPro project studies, genuine assignments from working life are solved. Projects are worked on in small multidisciplinary groups. At SeAMKPro, students get to experience for themselves what project work requires and at the same time strengthen their own developing expertise. Close cooperation with the companies also enables getting to know potential employers.
  • Project hatchery: Students form teams in which they develop their technical expertise and project skills in tasks related to production development and product development.
  • Company assignments are available in all degree courses
  • At SeAMK Company Day, companies and other organizations can get to know future employees and make contacts with SeAMK's personnel and other companies participating in the event. For students, the day offers an opportunity to network with the working life of the area.
  • Talent Hub is a cooperation network consisting of the several organisations: towns, employment office, educational organisations etc. The aim is to help international experts to find employment in companies in the region or to start their own business as well as improve companies’ readiness to recruit international experts.
  • E-zone: brings together services related to entrepreneurship. SeAMK Y-Zone offers support, information and networking opportunities for all students interested in entrepreneurship.
  • SeAMK co-operative: students and staff have the opportunity to develop their business idea and try light entrepreneurship, for example by selling and invoicing their products and expertise through the cooperative.
  • Seies: operates in the South Ostrobothnia area for higher education students who can make contacts and learn skills which can benefit their future career - whether it is as an entrepreneur or employee.
  • Buyer/continuer school: Students are told less about buying a company than about starting one. Buying company is a quick way to develop, grow and renew a business or start entrepreneurship. We have developed a program specifically for those who are interested in starting a business by buying one existing one. We also run a continuer school that encourages familyrun firms siblings into continuing the companies.

And last but not least, my favourite topic Regional University. This is my every day bread and butter. We have five co-ordinators outside the main university campus and our main task is to improve the two-way discussion with university, companies and organisations and also students.

In real life this means:

•        Link between main campus and rural areas outside Seinäjoki

•        Competence mapping, skills gap -> lifelong learning department

•        Getting companies involved in RDI and course assignments

•        Finding students work experience placements and thesis assignments

 

The latest from entrepreneurial research

At SeAMK we have followed our students’ entrepreneurial intentions also after their studies and very importantly research shows that if a student shows intentions while studying, this can explain start-up behaviour even eight years after graduation:  https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ET-03-2019-0053/full/html

 


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