Offering an Entrepreneurship Course to All Engineering Students - Lessons Learned from ING2030 in Puc-Chile

Oct 15, 2026

Entrepreneurial learning has become a key element of modern engineering education, leading to the integration of technology-focused entrepreneurship courses in engineering curricula. This paper presents a third-year compulsory course at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, designed to build entrepreneurial skills beyond time. To improve the course, pre- and post-surveys assess self-efficacy and learning benefits across course methods over six academic periods. Results show strong perceived benefits, with project feedback and presentations reporting the highest learning gains.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Advances in Engineering Education

ING2030 Course: Research, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | FALL 2021 Offering an Entrepreneurship Course to All Engineering Students: Lessons Learned from ING2030 in Puc-Chile ISABEL HILLIGER CONSTANCE FLEET CONSTANZA MELIAN JORGE BAIER Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Santiago, Chile MAR PÉREZ-SANAGUSTÍN Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier Toulouse, France ABSTRACT Entrepreneurial learning experiences have become one of the key aspects of the state of the art in engineering education. As such, technology-focused entrepreneurship courses have been incorporated to engineering curricula — both in developed and developing countries. Following this trend, the Engineering School at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC-Engineering) designed a third-year compulsory course on research, entrepreneurship, and innovation, whose objective is to provide students with entrepreneurial skills that transcend time. To continuously improve this course, the Engineering Education Unit at PUC-Engineering has been conducting pre-and post-surveys, assessing self-efficacy and learning benefits related to various course methods. This paper describes the main lessons learned as a result of using this data-centric approach throughout the last six academic periods. We found that the course is perceived as beneficial by most of its students, and that project feedback sessions and project presentations report the highest perceived learning benefits. Besides, we describe some of the improvements to the course that have been pushed by assessment data, showing the importance of using a data-driven approach for engineering entrepreneurship education. Key words: Entrepreneurship; Engineering Curriculum; Assessment INTRODUCTION Over the past two decades, engineers have become key stakeholders in venture creation, either creating or participating in entrepreneurial initiatives (Wright et al., 2007) . As a consequence, policy ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION Offering an Entrepreneurship Course to All Engineering Students: Lessons Learned from Ing2030 in Puc-Chile interventions have promoted the creation of entrepreneurship programs in engineering education (Duval-Couetil et al. , 2016; Maresch et al. , 2016) .‘Economic trends and a changing job market for college graduates have generated significant interest in graduating more engineers who possess entrepreneurship skills and an entrepreneurial mindset’ (Duval-Couetil et al. , 2014, p. 1) . Through entrepreneurial training, future engineers are expected to adapt to the changing and complex technologies, and drive the generation of solutions to major technological problems — both locally and globally (Purzer et al. , 2016) . In developed countries, there has been a significant growth in the delivery of entrepreneurial learning experiences to future engineers (Celis & Huang-Saad, 2015; Gilmartin, Shartrand, Chen, Estrada,& Sheppard, 2016) . The most prestigious universities in the world have implemented technologyfocused courses that have been typically offered as part of minors and certificates (Duval-Couetilet al. , 2014; Gilmartin et al. , 2016) . Meanwhile, in developing countries, these types of courses have recently started to emerge (Moreno et al., 2016; Odora, 2015; Raju et al., 2015), and promising results are expected in entrepreneurial activity and the acquisition of entrepreneurial skills (Duval-Couetilet al. , 2014; Walter & Block, 2016) . Following this trend, engineering programs have started to implement practical experiences based on project-and team-based learning (Rae & Melton, 2017) . However, more research is needed to understand what is expected from entrepreneurial training and what are the proper pedagogical approaches for its delivery (Huang-Saad et al. , 2020) . So far, the contribution of entrepreneurship education has been assessed throughout different methods, such

FAQs

What is the main goal of the ING2030 entrepreneurship course?

It aims to provide students with entrepreneurial skills that transcend time, using a compulsory third-year structure focused on research, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

How was course improvement supported in this study?

Engineering Education Unit conducted pre- and post-surveys evaluating self-efficacy and learning benefits related to different course methods across six academic periods.

Which course activities produced the highest perceived learning benefits?

Project feedback sessions and project presentations report the highest perceived learning benefits among students.

Oct 15, 2026

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