Abstract:

The European Commission’s report Education for Entrepreneurship [1] suggests that activities motivating the creation of entrepreneurial talents should be introduced in Higher Education. One of the objectives of the Promoting Entrepreneurial Culture programs in Higher Education is to connect students with local entrepreneurs.

Many authors [2] consider that in the field of entrepreneurship such meetings at the University involve exchange of knowledge and are linked to a real learning where the individual, society and institutions are related to each other.

These meetings allow students to better guide their own professional future. In addition, they provide opportunities to show the influence of the individual personality and socio-cultural characteristics of the environment on entrepreneurial initiatives [3]. The success of these meetings is based on the way in which the entrepreneurs engage students and inspire them. It is therefore important to use tools to monitor the student’s opinions in real time to evaluate these meetings and adapt them in order to achieve greater efficiency and impact.

In this experience a round table was organized with entrepreneurs who explained their experience and Twitter, the social media based on short messages, was used to obtain feedbacks from the students in real time.

Twiter data were used to evaluate the usefulness of the meetings between entrepreneurs and the engineering students and the perception of the use of Twitter as a monitoring and evaluation tool was assessed by a questionnaire.

References:
[1] European Commission. Action plan: the European agenda for entrepreneurship. Brussels: European Commission; 2004. Available from: http://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europejobs/
linksdossier/entrepreneurship-in-europe/
[2] Fayolle, A., Kyrö, P. The dynamics between entrepreneurship, environment and education. Cheltenham, Glos, UK: Edward Elgar. 2008.
[3] Christensen J., Lelinge B. (2016) The importance of the meeting in relation to entrepreneurial learning – two learning environments within a Swedish context; a research circle and a school musical. ESR Journal 1(1).

Keywords:

Entrepreneurs, Higher Education, engineering students.