En 
Da
Masterclass programmes “teach the teachers” to promote entrepreneurship among students.
“We’re working in the same direction,” three lecturers from Danish universities conclude in unison. This is some of the feedback they received after a masterclass programme with two of the heavyweights in entrepreneurship education, Ken Singer and David Law from University California, Berkeley. The three Danish participants teach on a daily basis at SDU, AAU and KU and participated in one of two masterclasses in August to gain an insight into the methods used at Berkeley’s “Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology”, where the Californian guests teach a 25-week course in entrepreneurship.
The purpose of this summer’s masterclass has been to “teach the teachers” to inspire them to rethink their teaching of entrepreneurship and give them some concrete tools they can use when teaching their students. The goal, of course, is for Danish teachers to stimulate an entrepreneurial mindset even more in their teaching and among the students themselves, which may ultimately awaken a desire to become an entrepreneur.
“The Berkeley method, which the participants got an insight into, is very hands-on orientated and differs in this respect from Danish conditions,” said Martin Senderovitz, researcher and lecturer in entrepreneurship at SDU.
“We are more theory-orientated in our teaching in Denmark and we also take a broader view of what entrepreneurship is. Berkeley’s approach is very much geared towards startups, and it was inspiring to hear their angle on it. But entrepreneurship is much more. It’s a process that, depending on your perspective, can be applied to a wide range of areas. Overall, the presentations and discussions we’ve had over the two days have served as a mirror for me to reflect on how we approach things on a daily basis at the university. And it’s pretty much in line with what they do at UC Berkeley.”
Another of the participants, Jesper Vestergaard, Project Manager in Student Entrepreneurship at AAU Innovation, says:
“It has been very rewarding to meet some talented people who are used to working on a slightly different scale than we know in Denmark and have the “big package” of tools and experiences. I’ve gained a lot of inspiration, concrete tools and thoughts about framing teaching and facilitating learning in entrepreneurship and translating it into something useful.Especially around the inclusion of games in teaching, which we have also tested,and I have been confirmed that Berkeley’s approach to teaching is not so far from what we do at AAU.”
Repeating success from 2019
The initiative for the two intensive days in Copenhagen comes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ two Innovation Centres in Boston and Silicon Valley. In 2019, the two centres arranged a delegation trip to the US, where participants from Danish universities were introduced to entrepreneurship education in Boston and California, including MIT, Stanford University and UC Berkeley’s entrepreneurship education and the building of ecosystems that support students in becoming entrepreneurs. The outcome was great and with the Otto Mønsted Foundation as main sponsor, it has subsequently been possible to invite the two prominent professors from Berkeley as speakers to both Copenhagen and Aarhus.
“The two days have been a huge inspiration for me and I have also been reassured that what I do is entrepreneurship education. I am absolutely certain that the knowledge I have gained can help promote entrepreneurship among the students and I will definitely go home and tell my colleagues about it,” says Birthe Kragelund, Professor of Protein Science from the Department of Biology at UCPH.
Read more here: Sutardja Centre for Entrepreneurship (SCET).