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Teaching undergraduate students entrepreneurship skills: a boot camp for high impact technological business projects Armando Alemán Juárez, Ximena Capetillo García Williams, María del Carmen García Higuera
Publicación original en INTED18 Proceedings Año 2018 Páginas 8078-8084 ISSN 2340-1079 doi 10.21125/inted.2018.1953
Abstract Recognizing the value of teaching entrepreneurship, Universidad Panamericana has mandatory courses in the undergraduate curricula. Furthermore, last year, the university offered a full immersion semester-long entrepreneurship boot camp in collaboration with a private company: iLab, a program designed to develop entrepreneurial talent by guiding students through the process of building up ideas and making them real through high impact technological business projects. This paper presents the experiences of nine student participants in the boot camp. Preliminary findings focus on how entrepreneurship education influenced the development of undergraduate students. They strengthened some skills such as critical and analytical thinking, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and interpersonal skills. Students described their experiences in iLab as very challenging but rewarding. In addition to hard work and the sacrifices they had to make in order for their projects to come through, they shared the importance of living the process (methodology), their personal growth, and how the experience enhanced their decision-making skills. Alongside these results, findings provide insights for higher education institutions. To move to a stu-
dent-centered model, higher education institutions need to include experiential learning projects and partner with different centers inside and outside the university to reshape the curricula and provide diverse learning experiences. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Business Skills, Technology, Projects, Project-Based Learning
1. INTRODUCTION AND PROBLEM STATEMENT Our understanding of teaching and learning in higher education has grown exponentially, and in some cases, has outpaced the conceptions of teaching. Bass (2012) describes how the fine boundary between the classroom and life experience, along with the increased power of social learning, and integrative contexts have created new ways of learning and disruptive teaching experiences. Literature has shown that entrepreneurship education benefits students from all socioeconomic backgrounds because it helps develop unique talents and skills, such as critical thinking, communication, and collaboration (Rodov & Truong, 2015). Moreover, Hegarty (2006) states that teaching entrepreneurship in universities can encourage
Referencia bibliográfica Alemán, A., Capetillo, X. y García, M. C. (2018). Teaching undergraduate students entrepreneurship skills: A boot camp for high impact technological business projects. INTED18 Proceedings, 8078-8084. doi: 10.21125/ inted.2018.1953.
