Enterprise Learning Strategy

A key aim for WRCE is to increase the entrepreneurial competency of graduates, postgraduates and research staff. The principal means of achieving this will be through training, teaching and learning projects that help to develop and change the curriculum in appropriate ways at these different levels.

Enterprise is defined broadly as activity that raises the capacity (attitudes, skills and competencies) for invention, innovation, commercialisation, technology acquisition and founding new business not only among university students and staff but also among employees of existing businesses and among sole traders as well as start-ups.

The relevance of enterprise activity and innovation is inherent within all practices within the university and therefore of relevance to staff and students of all levels.

TRAINING, TEACHING AND LEARNING PROGRAMMES

The training, teaching and learning programme is focussed on cultural change to increase the capacity of the institutional and regional SET base to engage in enterprise activity. We thereby seek to increase the volume of innovative ideas and opportunities.

There is also an exploitation and commercialisation programme, focussed on making better use of what we already generate and of gaining maximum added value from the effect of the training programme, and a research forum, to increase our knowledge base.

A Director of Enterprise Learning will oversee the enterprise learning development programme; initially this role will be filled by Jonathan Adams (Dean for Strategic Development, University of Leeds) on half-time secondment.

He is aided and supported by three Enterprise Learning managers, appointed to each of the three universities. An Enterprise Learning Committee will help to define objectives, review and support projects and lead their embedding into our teaching and learning strategies and programmes of staff development, ensuring the activities integrate with policies on graduate employability, work experience and graduate recruitment. The Committee will also be a route for advice from business and support agencies, RDA and Government Office staff involved in high level skills. As the expertise of the Centre builds up and networks are established, there will be an increasing capability to inform programmes for business and strengthen enterprise learning.

Departments and cluster groups will bid for resources as set out in this document.

The text below was originally drafted from a Leeds perspective but it is recognised that, in fact, there are differences in the modular and semester structure between the three campuses. The programme is intended to respond to and support the normal learning and teaching practices in all three universities, not to achieve unintentional conformity.

Framework for learning, training and teaching

We seek to teach about enterprise and cultural change. The changing nature of work and business require the generation of new attitudes among all graduates, whether or not they might start a business themselves. But enterprise is an active process not well stimulated by a didactic approach and we will therefore also seek to train to enhance enterprise skills and entre-preneurial competency.

We have already initiated an audit of our current provision. Each of the three universities has been innovative in the development of enterprise programmes, and this is a major strength for our Centre. We have programmes on, for example, graduate employability, work experience and recruitment and work place mentoring. We also have practical experience in developing records of achievement and work accreditation processes for both students and science industry employees. We have student projects and placements with companies; programmes in which businesses are set up as part of student project work; and our business and management schools link to the SET curriculum through business awareness modules in engineering and science degrees and postgraduate MEng and MRes modules.

Our audit has also demonstrated a high level of experience and of expectation among undergraduates. Typically, about one-third of new undergraduates bring with them some prior learning experience of enterprise. This may be through a 'business enterprise' competition, through work in a school or voluntary organisation, or through running a small business of their own. Many entrants - typically rather more than half - expect to see material relevant to 'enterprise' in their course modules; they also expect this to be based on real world examples relevant to their degree focus.

To address the WRCE aims and to develop material that can be deployed successfully to meet student expectations we will need a variety of smaller and larger projects. These might, for example:

• Enable the development and assessment/validation of an existing course component relevant to enterprise and innovation
• Develop evaluation models for existing or new enterprise activity - pilot programmes in Sweden and Germany indicate that assessment and evaluation is a particular challenge
• Co-ordinate successful initiatives from previous programmes and use them more widely in all three institutions
• Develop new material for common use across the universities to support innovation in the undergraduate teaching base
• Develop specific course material on project management or develop small group training on planning or, at a higher level for postgraduate and research staff, on starting a new venture
• Buy in or create 'Case Study' material - this might be the extension of something already being used, or it might come from regional business inputs or it might on a larger scale use existing examples such as the Babson College model of a comprehensive 'master case study' across the full curriculum
• Work with national initiatives impacting on the curriculum, such as DfEE's employability agenda, the Engineering Council's SARTOR or NCWE models for work experience

We will aim to get a balanced portfolio of projects, across disciplines, levels and campuses. This means that proposals for projects will be preferred if they help to achieve this aim.

Many small projects will be focussed on validation, assessment or development of a small component of one course. These developments should be transferable but, for the more ambitious projects, particular preference will be given to those that involve staff from several disciplines or from all three campuses from the outset. It is far more effective to have interested users active in these projects right the way through their development than it is for the users only to learn about them at the dissemination stage.