Abstract:

In France, the University’s missions have evolved. Its aim is henceforth not only transmit knowledge to students but also participate in the training of citizens throughout their lives and help to develop economic activities. In a context of economic crisis, Universities have a social role to play, with the new concept of RSU: Social Responsibility of Universities, especially with the development of sandwiches courses for new students coming from areas with social and economic problems such as disadvantaged suburbs.

Our researcher’s positioning is the Action Research approach: building usable knowledge for action with transfer of results to all the actors and stakeholders. We belong to the French academic discipline of Information and Communication Sciences (ICS) which emphasizes the articulation between link (interactions), meaning, and knowledge for action [1].

We work on the basis of interviews with key players: that of PEPITE (Students Poles For Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship) projects (29 in France) and especially GCs (Creator Groups) for DUCAs (University Degrees for Creating Activity): involved students, trainers, officials, local missions; local authorities, etc. A national student-entrepreneur status has been established. It allows the student (s) and young graduate (s) to develop an entrepreneurial project in a PEPITE context and to obtain a "student-entrepreneur" degree.

These projects involve the development of new interactive teaching methods in an approach of building new skills for students and not only receiving knowledge, integrating emotions and feelings of students [2, 3], creation of assessment tools of acquired skills (concept of diploma supplement) and monitoring the progress of the student (student’s pathway) based on ICT (e-book ) as “mediator artifact” [4].
Our University also organizes "All creative" days to develop all their members’ interest towards the challenges of creativity (both students and teachers’).

We will first present the specificity of the public of DUCAs: students in difficult social situations and in personal reconstruction and developed partnerships, then the main results: about 500 students interested and more than 200 graduated, nearly half of them created their activities. We will analyse specific situations of business creations through Situational and Interactionist Semiotic [5] analyzing the main tools evoked above.
We will also discuss the limitations of the present results and the prospects for emerging developments.

References:
[1] Bernard F., 2006, « Les SIC une discipline de l’ouverture et du décloisonnement », in Bouzon A. dir., La communication organisationnelle en débat. Champs, concepts, perspectives, Paris, L’Harmattan, p. 33 – 46.
[2] Goleman D. 1998, Working with Emotional Intelligence, Bloomsbury, London.
[3]Martin-Juchat F., 2007, « Penser le corps affectif comme média dans une perspective d’anthropologie par la communication affective », Revue Le corps n°4, mars 2008 : p. 85-92.
[4] Vygotsky L.S., 1978,. Mind in Society. The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Harvard University Press.
[5] Mucchielli A., 2010, Situation et communication, Ed. Ovadia, Nice.

Keywords:

Universities, France, Entrepreneurship, Action Research, Emotions, Situations.