Abstract:

The STEAM strategies are a multidisciplinary approach, which has been recognized as an effective way of achieving the skills currently required in the labour market. These skills include, among others, creativity, problem solving and critical thinking. It is said that by incorporating different fields of study into the subjects, the solutions to the current social and economic problems, which are complex, will come from the confluence of several disciplines.

In the activity presented in this paper, the Science competence is included in a Social Science subject through the adaptation of the scientific method to the activity designed. The activity was intended for students enrolled in the Master in Business, Product and Services Management during the course 2019-2020. The aim was to inspire students to observe and generate their own questions about the entrepreneurial journey, so that their own curiosity motivates them to make questions.

The activity presented was based on the visit to the coworking facility STARTUPV. The activity included tasks to be performed by the students before, during and after the activity. Before the activity, students received instructions from the instructor, which indicated they had to ask themselves two questions about one of the following topics: the entrepreneurial journey, an entrepreneurial ecosystem, like STARTUPV or a concrete startup in that facility. Once the student had the two questions, they were asked to think some answers and then to transform answers into hypotheses (If X is given, it is likely that Y is given). It was also explained that during the meeting with the entrepreneurs, they should make questions and use observation to obtain the information needed to test their hypotheses. After the activity, the students had to write a report, which should include: the two questions they had made, as well as possible answers, the hypotheses they had tested, explanation about how they found the information needed to test the hypotheses, conclusions about the results for the tested hypotheses and reasons that could explain the differences between the defined and tested hypotheses.

Information obtained from the activity (during and after) was used to analyse the results. Three analyses were made a descriptive analysis to evaluate how many students covered the seven tasks defined for the competence Science, a Social Network Analysis to connect students and tasks, and a Chi2 test to obtain association between tasks performed. Results indicate that around 70% of students had made questions and answers before the visit. However, only 50% had defined hypotheses, whilst 43% made questions to the entrepreneurs during the visit. Moreover, results find association between these results, indicating that when there was not hypothesis definition, it was less likely to obtain questions to entrepreneurs during the visit, results about hypotheses tested and reasons for differences between hypothesis defined and tested.

Keywords:

STEAM, competences, Science, entrepreneurship, activity outside the classroom, SDG.