The development of entrepreneurial competencies in a technical university: experience and good practices

Modern Russian universities solve several problems in order to increase their competitiveness. One of them is the development of students' soft skills. This allows graduates to successfully integrate into the modern business and gain job achievements. One of the programs that forms soft skills is a course in Entrepreneurship. In Perm National Research Polytechnic University this course is available for students since 2012 (as a part of complex 'Students' entrepreneurial activity development project' launched at 2007). It's an elective course available for students of all majors within the University. About 700 students of 9 faculties choose this course annually. This course allows students to get acquainted with the principles of entrepreneurship, try to develop their own entrepreneurial project. The main principles of the course are the orientation to practice and the use of gamification of the learning process. Gamification does not mean the transformation of classes into a game, but the use of techniques of active involvement of participants in a dynamic and two-sided educational process. Entrepreneurship teaching process involves the use of «Flipped Class» principle. The main part of the class time is devoted to the analysis of students' projects. The teacher's role is to help students in developing their entrepreneurial competencies. Also students are taught to operate models and calculations. In this case the role of the teacher (or tutor) is to create a class with 'lean environment', which stimulates, even a little interested in the initial stage of students, to engage in the development of projects. Classes are conducted by practitioners who have their own entrepreneurial experience or experience in real business. This all becomes possible, thanks to the university entrepreneurial ecosystem, which includes entrepreneurial clubs, business-incubators, startups' competitions, information resources etc.