EntreSTEAM - Designing solutions entrepreneurially via online language and communication training in the STEAM disciplines.
In 2019, a pandemic hit the globe and brought about many changes. Educational institutes around the world faced a challenge like never before. Suddenly, teaching had to be relocated to the online classroom. Although technology was already being used to enhance classroom lessons and some courses were already held online, the pandemic accelerated an inevitable shift toward technology-enriched learning. This development brings with it many positive aspects. The opportunities for accessing different courses online are expanding, and the possibilities of working and collaborating virtually with people across the world are proliferating. Physical, national borders have become much less significant.
The EntreSTEAM project combines the drive towards online learning with current directions in education, such as entrepreneurship education and boosting the digital competencies of educators and students. EntreSTEAM also strives to integrate important skills for working life into the higher education curricula, focusing on the development of competences such as problem-solving, teamwork and the design of solutions for real-world problems. The project mainly targets language teachers in European universities but, as we are Erasmus+ funded project, we aim to disseminate the products of the project as widely as we can. All the materials and outcomes produced in our project are openly available for everyone.
Collaboration of three universities
The EntreSTEAM project started in September 2020, but the collaboration between the partners began earlier. Our project consists of three partners: the University of Oulu, Finland (coordinator); the University of Zaragoza, Spain; and Poznan University of Technology, Poland.
Our partners share a common interest in exploring innovative ways of teaching and learning, especially when it comes to foreign languages and entrepreneurship education.
Goals of our project
Enhance the working life relevance of language courses
In modern working life, university graduates require a skillset that will enable them to tackle the wide range of challenges that they and society face in the years ahead. These challenges may be difficult to predict, and therefore creativity, resourcefulness and resilience are qualities that our students need to develop.
Through the resources produced by EntreSTEAM, our students are given the opportunity to develop their skills in these areas, as well as to gain experience of other essential working-life skills. These include identifying and solving problems, as well as working effectively as members of transnational teams to negotiate their way together to achieve common targets.
Increase virtual mobility of students and teachers
The ability to communicate effectively across cultural divides is a key skill for all citizens, offering a range of perspectives with which to approach challenges and tackle some of the world’s wicked problems. While mobility for both students and teachers can promote fruitful exchange of ideas and know-how, still only a small fraction spend a period abroad during their studies or working life. In addition, disruptive factors such as the impact of COVID-19, national conflicts, economic crises and sustainability issues reduce the willingness of many to leave their home country.
Therefore more focus needs to be placed on Internationalization at Home (IaH) activities that offer possibilities to integrate international dimensions into the curriculum and offer global perspectives, whether or not students and teachers spend time abroad.
Strengthen students’ entrepreneurial skills
Working life is rapidly changing. It is increasingly difficult to anticipate what students will need to know to equip them for an uncertain future after graduation.
However, by integrating an Entrepreneurial Minded Learning approach into the language-course curriculum, we can equip our students with a way of thinking that can be applied to challenges that occur throughout working life. With an entrepreneurial mindset, students develop an active readiness to collaborate with others, channelling their creativity and skills into solving real-life problems. Equipped with this attitude, they are geared up to spotting opportunities to make a positive impact on the areas within their sphere of influence.
Outputs and results of the project
The Online Module
As our main result, we have created a bank of resources that combine English language and communication training with entrepreneurship education.
A curated selection of the resources has been organized into an online module that can be found in our Digicampus workspace. During the project, the module was first piloted within the partner universities, developed further and is now available to everyone. The Digicampus workspace also provides teachers with opportunities to network with other like-minded teachers who are looking to join forces and offer the module to students.
The full set of resources is located on this website (Resources è Activities): For teachers looking for activities at a particular skills level, of a particular type or on a particular topic, a search function is provided.
Teachers choose themselves how to use the materials - either by integrating the module as it is into their course or by using it as an inspiration for creating their own innovative language course.
Train the Trainers
We wanted to make sure that the resources we produced and the module we designed meets the needs of its users - language teachers and educators across Europe who wish to foster an entrepreneurial mindset in their students.
To this end, we created our Train the Trainers programme. This consisted of a series of Train the Trainers workshops, in which the concept of the module was presented, the resources developed by the EntreSTEAM project were demonstrated, and teachers were given guidance on how to facilitate the module. As the teachers participating in the programme played a role as co-creators, the project benefited greatly from their feedback and development ideas. Indeed, the final result would not look the same without these teachers’ contributions!
Best Practice Guide
The Best Practice Guide reports insights gleaned during the piloting rounds of project, which may be helpful during the implementation of our module (or a similar one) by other teachers.
The Guide can be found on this website under Resources and provides tips in areas such as student recruitment for the module, scheduling across institutions, formation of teams, facilitating teamwork, selection of online platforms and applications for effective teamwork, as well as a selected bibliography of relevant literature that may be useful for teacher-developers.
With the Guide, teachers will find practical guidelines which will help them to apply the principles of the module when running a similar module in their own context.
Student guide to transnational teamwork
Teamwork is not an easy activity, especially when people from various backgrounds, fields and cultures need to collaborate to achieve common goals. Especially at the start while team members are finding their places, transnational teams need to be nourished.
Our Student Guide aims to offer concrete tips and tools on how to work and communicate efficiently in a team, in particular in a transnational team.