Abstract:

The Department of Economics and Management of the University of Trento offers a master's program about hybrid and sustainable companies that has the aim to transfer the ability to examine opportunities and challenges for promoting corporate and nonprofit/hybrid corporate responsibility and sustainability. The course on Sustainability and Entrepreneurship aims to impart knowledge, skills, competencies, approaches, and techniques specific to social impact business design. It also seeks to understand current challenges, trends, and future scenarios in sustainability, innovation, and social entrepreneurship, as well as the main business models available for creating social impact. Through developing knowledge related to social entrepreneurship and third-sector management, the course aims to analyze the spaces, tools, and opportunities for the strategic development of Third Sector organizations, the cooperative world, nonprofit companies, and B-Corp, focusing on new forms of social innovation.

It is a challenge-based and hands-on course that includes developing a project idea and a social business model to be presented at the end of the course, starting from challenges launched by entities in the Trentino territory (such as organizations, cooperatives, associations, etc.). By immersing themselves in the challenges, the students respond to concrete problems, presenting innovative and sustainable solutions at the end of the course.

The Curse aims to stimulate transversal skills, which are also the 15 entrepreneurial skills outlined by EntreComp, the European framework, divided into three macro areas: the ability to identify ideas and opportunities, knowing how to mobilize helpful resources to solve problems and generate solutions, and finally knowing how to manage a project.

At the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Identify and describe the main models of social entrepreneurship and social innovation;
- Recognize the main managerial approaches to transform social entrepreneurial opportunities into business models;
- Analyze and evaluate how social entrepreneurship and social innovation enable sustainability and how social entrepreneurs can act as change agents;
- Analyze the needs and funding sources for social entrepreneurship and social innovation;
- Analyze a problem, putting it in context, identifying key stakeholders, and understanding customer/user needs;
- Generate innovative and sustainable social impact solutions;
- Understand social impact design, measurement, and evaluation;
- Present a pitch in front of an audience consisting of faculty, investors, and Third Sector organizations.

The paper aims to describe the design and the implementation of this course, the impact of students' learning process, the individual and group assessment, and finally the impact on the entities that provided the challenges. The paper starts with an introduction and a section dedicated to the theoretical background related to challenge-based learning. Then, the paper describes the course and its main features, such as modules, assessments (distinct into individual and group assessments), challenges, and team formation. Finally, the paper presents findings regarding the students' learning process and the final outputs, such as the solutions proposed to the challenges. Conclusions include some recommendations to design a curricular challenge-based course and identify potential future explorations in the domain.

Keywords:

Challenge-based learning, education, sustainability, entrepreneurship, assessment.