Abstract:

In recent years, there has been a relevant presence in the diversity and number of postgraduate students collaborating in university courses focused on entrepreneurship and the development of products, services, and technologies that are viable. This phenomenon has been evidenced by a numerous number of factors, such as:
1) requirements in design thinking that drive the integration of real experiences into educational programs;
2) a collaboration with smaller companies which are considered a source of jobs; and
3) a trend towards creating more entrepreneurship in higher education.

In general, student involvement is associated with a range of positive and experiences and feelings. At universities, students belonging to Generation Z are increasingly engaged in developing goods, services, and technologies that are viable outside of the university. This consideration leads to relevant questions related to how best to align students with institutional strategies since most are not employed by their universities in the way that faculties and postgraduate students are.

Despite the seminal literature focused on the relevance of involvement and engagement in the classroom upon the performance of students and the climate in the classroom, there is little research for Generation Z in certain educational environments. In this paper, we describe an overview of the related literature and present the most important results in relation to academic performance in the classroom, in terms of happiness, satisfaction, and well-being of our students. This research is aimed to explore the effects of involvement for understanding certain academic results in higher education. Moreover, a theoretical and conceptual framework is guided in this investigation, methodological design, and analysis of results to capture attitudinal and cognitive perceptions of Centennials in a virtual university in Spain.

This paper aims:
(1) to identify the most relevant considerations and attitudes linked to postgraduate involvement in higher education, and
(2) to analyse the main effects of student’s involvement on academic outcome in the classroom.

Focusing on the most relevant cues of students, we carried out a methodology based on a case study. A questionnaire was applied to postgraduate students and knowledge transfer professionals to evaluate whether the generational component influences their academic outcomes related to involvement. Students and professionals were asked to record their experiences, and the results show that participants experienced both negative and positive feelings during this experimental period, as well as difficulties in the development of certain functional tasks.

The outline of this paper is the following: first, a section is devoted to the introduction, interest, and justification of this research. Second, we describe the conceptual and theoretical framework regarding stakeholders’ involvement in higher education, from centennials and knowledge transfer professionals’ views. Third, a methodology for exploring these topics is described in this paper. Fourth, a short discussion of the results is carried out and finally, a section is devoted to the conclusions, limitations, and main several implications.

Keywords:

Learning, Entrepreneurship, Centennials, Business Education, Spain.