Abstract:

Entrepreneurship education has been extensively studied at the level of undergraduate and postgraduate studies, however the focus has been mostly on young, traditional students. This research presents the results of a course called International Entrepreneurship and Business Development which is lectured as part of a professional master at Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal. The students of this master's have a minimum 5 years professional experience, but most of them have above 10 years and some have almost 30 years professional experience. The students attend the master's as part of their lifelong learning strategy and the classes are practical and focused on solving real-life problems. During the course, students have been exposed to different teaching and learning strategies, using individual and group work. They developed two group works focused on business modeling of a real company, they solved cases and performed pitches outside class. Sustainability concepts have been introduced and applied by students. The teaching and learning process was assessed in two ways: using the results from the quality assessment of the university (anonymous answers) and from the individual reflection of all students, developed as part of the assessment at the end of the course. Results indicate that students had a positive learning experience, however some improvement suggestions are provided for future editions of the course.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship education, problem-based learning, challenge-based learning, lifelong learning, authentic learning.