Developing a Measurement System for Entrepreneurship Education

In 2014, Elena Ruskovaara published “Developing a Measurement System for Entrepreneurship Education in Universities of Applied Sciences; A Case of Co-creation” in the University Industry Innovation Network’s Good Practice Series. Here, almost two years on, Ruskovaara reveals more about the origins, trends and challenges, and future progression of this case study in Finland.

The case presents operations that include the building, testing, implementing and utilization of the measurement system for entrepreneurship education for universities of applied sciences (UAS). The case presents a building process where a self-evaluation tool for entrepreneurship education for teachers working at UAS’s is created. The core philosophy in the development of the tool has been co-creation with the users. The primary objective of the initiative was to develop a user-friendly, easy-to-use, web-based system for teachers working at UAS. The tool was launched for Finnish UAS’s at the end of 2015. The coordinator of the process is Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), but all the activities were done together with three participating partners, HAMK University of Applied Sciences, Saimaa University of Applied Sciences and Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences.

The collaboration and shared expertise of the users (teachers) and the designers (researchers) were also crucial in this process. The measurement system was created within approximately 1.5 years and a distinctive in the process was action research methods and participatory action research. In this context group of users was included in the development of concepts, indicators, metrics, feedback systems, and the online evaluation system application.

The measurement tool for applied sciences completed in October 2015 and is now nationally used. The Finnish version of the tool can be found at : www.lut.fi/yrittajyysmittaristo

About Elena Ruskovaara

The origin of my interest in the topic of entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship education has been one of the cross-curricular themes in Finnish basic education schools since 1994, so we Finns have been involved with the theme quite some time. More specifically, it was some 15 years ago, when LUT started one of the first entrepreneurship education projects for schools, and from then on I have been actively developing, studying and researching the theme in all education levels.

The biggest trends and challenges facing the area of university-industry interaction

I would say university-industry interaction is very trendy topic at this moment, and I’m happy to say LUT has been a great leader in that field. I admit it is sometimes time-consuming to organize different university-industry activities, however, in most cases, it really pays back.

A similar case I would like to recommend to UIIN readers:

Above I described the measurement tool for applied sciences, but actually we started some ten years ago with the Measurement Tool for Enterprise Education, which is a tool for primary, secondary and upper secondary school teachers. The English version of that tool can be found at: https://developmentcentre.lut.fi/muut/enterprise/

You can read Elena Ruskovaara’s full Good Practice Case Study, here.