| Abstrakt: |
Historically, engineering education approaches emphasised technical expertise and professional knowledge. However, over the past few decades, there has been a trend towards developing more holistic engineers with well-developed social competencies, such as empathy. At the moment, to evolve empathy development approaches in engineering, students, researchers, and learning designers are studying the impact of different educational contexts on the formation of empathy. This includes service-learning, design or ethics education. Nonetheless, despite the growing interest in social competencies across engineering education, there is a lack of research toward the role of specific elements and triggers in educational programs that encourage students to empathise. In parallel with studying the role of specific educational contexts in developing empathy, entrepreneurship education has become an essential part of many educational programs and courses, including engineering and IT. One of the main goals of entrepreneurship education is to develop an entrepreneurial mindset in students, where the ability to empathise with others is a key competence. This study determines the triggers in entrepreneurial accelerators that encourage engineering students to use empathy. Researchers investigated the lived experiences of students engaged in entrepreneurial accelerators. Hermeneutic phenomenology acted as an overarching methodology during this study. The research focused on the experiences of 12 engineering students who participated in four Australian accelerators. Data was collected using a series of semi-structured interviews focusing on the sense-making process of students' lived experiences. Three themes of empathy triggers emerged, including Community of Practice (CoP), Program design and Challenges. This paper is submitted as a work-in-progress and is based on a larger research project focused on the role of entrepreneurial educational interventions in developing engineering students' empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
