dIgital eNtrepreneurial Skills For UniverSity Education

The COVID-19 pandemic created new business opportunities and transformed entrepreneurial activity in many countries. Digital entrepreneurship gained significant importance as it enabled the creati...

By implementing this project the INFUSSE consortium achieved the following goals: - Provided essential coaching and mentoring services to help aspiring digital young entrepreneurs navigate the after-pandemic reality. - Strongly supported the digital entrepreneurship education uptake in HEIs, through an innovative learning methodology based on competency-based logic and emphasizing authentic learning situations. - Deployed an innovative pedagogical methodology, designed to support both Educators and Learners to develop digital and entrepreneurial competencies. - Enhanced educators entrepreneurial thinking to enable their student entrepreneurial thinking by introducing them to entrepreneurship content. - The national and transnational INFUSSE Virtual Incubation Program enabled participants to collaborate, grow their co-creation spirit in seeking new digital business ideas and tackling joint challenges. - Created an inclusive educational HUB and provided a high-quality educational experience. The HUB is/was easily accessed from multiple target groups across EU. - Uptook the development of digital and entrepreneurial competences’ building, as well as sustainable partnerships at local, EU and international scale.

INFUSSE project aimed to strengthen HEIs Entrepreneurial activity and strengthen the labor market with reskilled and upskilled graduate students. By reskilling or improving competencies, various obstacles and deficiencies would be restricted, and new opportunities will be offered to INFUSSE participants (students, graduates, educators). The INFUSSE objectives have been achieved because of partners commitment to complete in best quality the activities accompanied each PR. INFUSSE produced 9 PRS with all partners contribution. The PR leader was assigned based on their competencies and experience. PR1-“Digital Entrepreneurial Education” pedagogical scenarios extraction including specifications for training, methodology and learning tools. Under KiNNO leadership the partners examined the different aspects, stakeholder, and best practices of nationa Digital Entrepreneurial programmes. In this study phase 4 PR activities were included: PR1/A1 Identification & Collection of initiatives and Real Life Case Studies, PR1/A2 Qualitative analysis of Case Studies resulting in Best Practices, Key processes & KPIs extraction, PR1/A3 Mapping and development of a database of key stakeholders of interest and PR1/A4 "Digital Entrepreneurial Education" stakeholders needs analysis. The insights from PR1 were utilized for the Digital Learning Programme, Modules & Tools Development phase. Under this phase 4 PRs took place. PR2-INFUSSE Educators’ Training Path (digital skills, tools and guidelines to “train-the-trainers”), PR3-INFUSSE Virtual Incubation Programme: “Run a Digital Entrepreneurship Solution against CoVid-19” challenge. These 2 PRs had a similar structure and activities. A1: development of programmes requirements, structure, tools, and material specification A2: Material development. The conent had been assigned to partners from the proposal. A3: Material translation. KiNNO, ICEBERG, CUE had to translate the produced material to their national languages. PR4-INFUSSE Open Educational Resources HUB. Under PR4/A1 CREATEHUB developed the INFUSSE e-learning hub, and provided guidelines to partners on how to upload their material to the platform (PR4/A2). Also, coordinated the organization of the 3 Local Dissemination Webinars (PR4/A3) that executed by HEI partners in collaboration with the national innovation organizations. PR5-INFUSSE Assessment Framework. Led by KiNNO, partners worked to define the methodology and the qualitative evaluation tools that were utilized during the activities and would help the partnership to improve the INFUSSE learning process effectiveness, and efficiency. During this activity, 392 questionnaires were analyzed. Training/Piloting Phase tested and used the methodology and tools that were developed in previous PRs. PR6-Pilot test of the INFUSSE Educators’ Training Path enhancing the digital pedagogical competences of educators.This activity enhanced educators’ digital skills, and prepared them to become coaches and trainers for PR7, and PR8. Following UMFST guidelines the 3 HEIs supported by national innovation organizations run a 7-day training programme. According to the proposal, each programme needed to be attended by 10 participants per country. This goal achieved and in total 31 trainers (Researchers, educators, managers) were involved in PR6 (11 from GR, 10 from PL, and 10 from RO). Following the programmes, UMFST developed a public report that summarized the programme structure, the quality review, pitfalls, and lessons learned. PR7-Pilot test of the INFUSSE Virtual Incubation Programme for Digital Entrepreneurship in national level. This activity designed to run on national level and utilized the translated learning material. The 3 HEIs in collaboration with the national innovation organizations run a 5-day virtual incubation programme under CUE guidelines. According to the proposal, from each country 30 learners needed to participate. In the Programme were registered 211 learners but only 71 (31 from GR, 30 from RO, 10 from PL) completed the programme (participated in coaching sessions and Demo day). PR8-Pilot Test the Transnational pillar of the INFUSSE Virtual Incubation Programme. This transnational activity was coordinated by UoM and tried to bring together learners from GR, RO, PL. The activity aimed to let learners co-create and develop new or advance existing project ideas. Each partners brought to the activity 5 project teams that needed to develop at least 7 transnational ideas. In the acitivity 13 project ideas participated (5 from GR, 5 from RO, 3 from PL. However, the acitivity succeeded to develop 10 transnational ideas from 31 learners (12 from GR, 12 from RO, 7 from PL). Aftermath-Guidelines & Recommendations phase consisted of 1 PR and the multiplier event. ICEBERG Plus led PR9-Development of local and pan-European conditions to incorporate the INFUSSE Approach in the education systems, as well as in the recently launched Digital Edu Action Plan and developed a Handbook proposing various interventions in multiple levels (policy, academic, business). The multiplier event organized by UoM and took place on 19/01/2024 in Thessaloniki. The event presented the INFUSSE approach by shedding light on INFUSSE methodology, INFUSSE platform, programmes structures, quality review and policy reccommendations. The event reached 165 participants in total (132 local & 33 foreign).

INFUSSE project succeeded to bring together HEIs and innovation support organizations and to develop a learning experience that support educators with digital, technical and educational competencies to deliver high-quality virtual training programmes on digital entrepreneurial education. Through the INFUSSE approach participants (learners) developed new ideas, co-created, emprasized the open innovation principles and started or advanced project ideas. This learning approach was pilot tested to a sufficient sample of participants and produced 3 public reports summarizing methodology, programme structure, tools, technologies, pitfalls and lessons learned. Through this reports the consortium aimed to share their experience that could be implemented in future implementation. Furthermore, the INFUSSE strengthen the HEI entrepreneurial activity and enhanced university entrepreneurship. Students and graduates that participated in the project advanced their skills and qualifications but also improved their soft and communication skills. The INFUSSE results was and will be available via the INFUSSE website, INFUSSE platform, and ERASMUS+ Result platform. The available results are: - The validated INFUSSE innovative learning methodology based on a competency-based logic and authentic learning scenarios - The proven INFUSSE Educators’ Training Path, providing subject matter expertise in Digital Entrepreneurship and digital pedagogical competences enhancement aiming at enhancing them to be digitally-competent and confident to run the Training Programme on “Digital Entrepreneurship” and support the Virtual Incubation as coaches/mentors for the participants. - The proven INFUSSE Virtual Incubation Program, aiming to reinforce the digital entrepreneurship capacities of learners (students and graduates), as well as empowering them to cooperate virtually with national and transnational teams towards co-creation and open innovation. - The tested INFUSSE high-quality digital learning material, available to any interested party via the INFUSSE Open Educational Resources Hub in English, Greek, Romanian and Polish - The INFUSSE guidelines, key assessment outputs and recommendations consolidating the experience gained throughout the project activities and providing a solid delivery mechanism for future exploitation to all target users.