A New Student Learning Outcome to Strengthen Entrepreneurship and Business Skills and Mindset in Engineering Curricula

Abstract

The Outcome-Based Education (OBE) model is being adopted by most of the reputable academic accreditation bodies and academic institutions. The model concentrates on what the students are able to do after fulfilling their program requirements. Student Learning Outcomes usually cover the needed knowledge areas and the skillset required to be attained by students to meet market-needs. In engineering education, most of the concerned accreditation bodies require to attain a set of student learning outcomes in knowledge areas, design and problem solving related to the academic program in addition to other learning outcomes that cover a set of skills needed to develop the competencies of graduating students to be ready for the jobs of future. The learning outcomes usually do not include an explicit learning outcome that concentrates on the business and entrepreneurial skillset and mindset. Having these in engineering curriculum and its’ learning outcomes is becoming vital in the requirements of the jobs of future and job creation. In this paper, the authors propose an explicit new student learning outcome to be added to existing engineering program leaning outcomes. The proposed outcome helps developing and instilling business and entrepreneurship mindsets in engineering programs’ graduates.