1. Esityksen aihe
Learning technology entrepreneurship via step-by step deepening E-E collaboration Juha Saukkonen senior lecturer, Management (Tech Business)   ,
JAMK/Tulosyksikkösi/Nimesi

2. “Executive summary”
Via students´ own reflection of their learning and feedback of the entrepreneur collaborators the learning impacts of different phases of a learning track were studied.
The results show that different forms of Enterprise-Education (E-E) activities spread across the academic year support each other in what comes to reaching the ILOs (Intended Learning Outcomes) set for the program. However, different forms of E-E emphasize different skills.
Learning changes learners´ own assessment of skill levels – knowledge open up new areas of not –yet-knowledge

3. The underlying and overarching motivation
Why ?
The underlying and overarching motivation
Revisiting Jamieson´s trichotomy, it can be said that a learning arrangement combining
1) education about enterprise (the “traditional teaching & learning phase”)
(2) education for enterprise (networking with and working for real entrepreneurs in s short term project”
(3) education in enterprise (making full semester assigned research in close cooperation with the enterprise)
seems to be one that would create fertile ground for learning for all parties (student, enterprise, HEI).

4. The case studied = Academic Track “Tech Business and Future Foresight”
The new curriculum at JAMK Internatonal Business has as a central concept Academic Tracks, i.e. specialization programmes.
The track in question aimed at:
1) Conceptual learning via traditional teaching- and workshop-based action (fall term, 2,5 months)
2) Application of learning to real-life context via project assignments from start-up technology companies from the local incubator (fall term, 2,5 months)
3) Thesis work, assigned research and development work done in the given context (in majority of cases for the same companies as in the stage 2. spring term, 4 months).

5. Schematic picture of curriculum and unit of study

6. Methods of data collection+ analysis
Esityksen aihe
Methods of data collection+ analysis
The data were gathered between September of 2016 and May of 2017 using the online survey tools of Webropol-platform.
The surveys to students – according to school university policy – were made anonymously, so only the people who had answered could be identified but linking the person and answers was not possible.
Both
Quantitative (self-assessment of learning vs. ILOs (Intenden Learning Outcomes set for the programme)
Qualitative (short narratives of learning after each phase)
Analysis via improvements in ILOs in numbers (self-efficacy and project customer-based assessment) as well as wordmaps of key expressions in the narratives and their relations.
JAMK/Tulosyksikkösi/Nimesi

7. The research process across time

8. Results - Quantitative

9. Results – Qualitative 1 (at T1 = after Teaching-based module)
Summary: The narratives reflect to a big extent educational vocabulary (track, teaching, thesis, course, workshop) but seeing the world from the entrepreneur angle has also commenced – e.g. the word map of
technology-company-about-business

10. Results – Qualitative 2 (at T2 = after Project module)
Summary; This phase added the notions of market and ideas into the big picture of Tech Business held after previous phase. The application value of the learning for the parties involved was also visible in the word map made of words:
useful-experience-great-companies

11. Results – Qualitative 3 (at T3 = after Thesis module)
Summary: Students described less their own development and process and put more weight into the results achieved and applicable learning gained. Students have adopted the phenomena of multi-faceted nature and ambiguity (reflected in words such as compare, multiple, various) of technology business.

12. Conclusions
The general dynamics of a business sector can be taught in an intensive manner so that the learners feel an improved capability in ILO-achievements.
Those learnings can to a large extent be utilized also in the real-life business context, as observed by the project-assigning companies.
Furthermore, living in a close collaboration relationship with the companies in the field (via project and thesis-work) brings additional learning that is difficult to achieve inside the universities’ internal context.
The impacts to assessed skill grow surprisingly little after the first module of learning based on school-based teaching (lectures and workshops) – this is however inline with earlier studies that indicate that people recalibrate their scales when learning more and seeing real-life demands

13. Value for education practitioners
The results point out the relevant issues for entrepreneurial educators and ecosystems to consider when setting up new practices that aim at both student employability to novel companies and start-up development support.
The research also works as an evaluation and development basis for the program in the focus of the paper and adds to the earlier research on the value of project-based learning and joint learning and development experiences between (technology) business students and entrepreneurs.

14. Critical Remarks
To get a full picture of the learning effects and benefits to all parties in the kind of sequential learning track as in this case, the measurements from stage to stage should be used by all parties (student, companies, faculty) across the phases.
The assessments of students’ skills should use ILOs also when grading their achievements for the school purposes, since now the measurement by the faculty is based on the artefacts created (exams, reports, presentations) that reflect the ILOs but are not tightly linked into them.
The narratives do not reveal the cause and effect relationships as well as in-depth interviews. The varying numbers of respondents per measurement should be collected from all categories of students; from those ones who commit to the track and continue to the very end of it but also for those who abandon the track and continue to the other track (on other topic area) they started as the same time. This would reveal the dispelling factors of the track.

15. Coming up? 2nd edition of the learning track started in end August
Qualitative and numerical data (of learning and skills build-up) collected at all timepoints of the process – targeting to 90+ % response rate to surveys => wider material to be analyzed during 2018
Simultaneously to the lengthy and deepening Academic Track (Tech Business and User-Centric Innovation) there are two courses for different groups for the same topic area of Tech Business
* Tech Business Dynamics – a 5 ECTS course (containing a business
simulation game + lectures and workshops)
* Business Simulation Game – the same as above with added
demands for reporting and analysis- 5 ECTS. Intergrative case
simulation in running a tech business company. No lectures or
workshops to support learning.
=> comparative research between the 3 learning modes