Teaching Students to be Innovators: Examining Competencies and Approaches Across Disciplines

Abstract

Universities are increasingly promoting programs and courses that focus on innovation to prepare students across disciplines for work in a competitive global economy. Information about program outcomes, target competencies, or best practices is limited given their early stages of development. This exploratory study examined eight academic programs offering an educational credential focused on innovation available to students in a variety of majors. The analyses of program descriptions and curricular requirements provide an understanding of their structure, content, and value they propose to students. This paper explores what teaching innovation means at a program-level and identifies where a curriculum is situated along the spectrum of topics that characterize innovation education. The results can be useful in developing and articulating core competencies related to innovation and understanding approaches to teaching it.

The Roots of Entrepreneurial Career Goals among Today's Engineering Undergraduate Students

“…The EMS included constructs addressing these socio-cognitive factors and contextual sources of influence. We connect this model to recent findings about the roots of engineering students' intentions to start new ventures (Lintl et al, 2015) and research on students' innovation and entrepreneurial skills (Duval-Couetil & Dyrenfurth, 2012;Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, 2011). In this study, we ask who are the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, what motivates them, and what learning experiences influence their career pathways.…”

“…Innovation is a methodical discipline; it can be taught, learned and applied systematically. TRIZ, SCRUM, and Design Thinking are innovation methods that can be used to teach and enable innovative behavior and thinking (Duval-Couetil & Dyrenfurth, 2012;Osorio, 2011;Dym, Agogino, Eris, Frey, & Leifer, 2005). "Innovation consists of a set of tasks carried out at the micro level by individuals and groups... within organizations.…”

Business Program Participation and Engineering Innovation: An Exploration of Engineering Students' Minors, Certificates, and Concentrations

“…Entrepreneurship (and by extension, business) is linked to innovation, although these concepts are not synonymous 2,7 . There is little research linking students' innovativeness to businessrelated learning opportunities, but there are more general studies of innovativeness among engineers.…”

Stimulating and Supporting Change in Entrepreneurship Education: Lessons from Institutions on the Front Lines

“…For example, now participants are asked to determine where courses lie on the innovation education continuum (i.e., "innovation process" or "innovation outcomes" ‡ ). 14,15 In addition, participants must determine the degree to which courses and programs integrate active learning, since active learning and particularly experiential learning are associated with greater student self-efficacy. [16][17][18][19][20] By encouraging teams to use the landscape tool for broader purposes, teams often engage people beyond the core Pathways team in the process (e.g., faculty from other disciplines, students on campus, and off-campus partners).…”