Developing students' innovation competence is becoming increasingly important in higher education, yet few studies have actually investigated whether current learning environments are aimed at promoting this competence and whether students perceive that they have mastered this competence. This study aimed to map students' perceptions of the learning environment in terms of whether their schools' curricula were directed towards developing innovation competence and their perceptions of their own innovation competence. A survey was created and administered to 130 students of Built Environment programs at eight Universities of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. Students perceived a supportive learning environment for innovation competence only to a limited degree. On the other hand, students rated their own innovation competence moderately highly. Despite positive perceptions of students' own innovation competence, the learning environment was only to a limited degree aimed at developing innovation competence. The results suggest that universities might need to focus more explicitly and structurally on the teaching and assessment of innovation competence.
In this study we investigated teachers' beliefs about innovation competence relevance and their creative self-efficacy and compared teachers' and students' perceptions of the learning environment in the Built Environment engineering education domain. In total, 94 teachers participated in this study by completing a questionnaire. Teachers perceived their creative self-efficacy and the learning environment in their classrooms to be supportive of innovation competence. However, only a minority of the teachers considered teaching for innovation competence relevant; most teachers perceived a focus on innovation competence in the curriculum as neutral. Multiple regression analyses showed that teachers' creative self-efficacy beliefs significantly predicted their perception personal relevance. Similarly, perception of focus on innovation competence in the curriculum significantly predicted perceived uncertainty, while creative self-efficacy significantly predicted perceived knowledge-building through teacher-student and studentstudent negotiation. Findings of the study are discussed with respect to developing students' innovation competence in the Built Environment education domain.
The competence to innovate is critical for engineering students, as work environments and society are constantly changing. However, innovation competence is often not (explicitly) part of teaching, and teachers struggle to teach students this competence. To address this problem, a course to train undergraduate engineering students' innovation competence was designed, based on six design principles. The instruction was nested in a final-year undergraduate Built Environment course. A mixed-method study (pre-and post-training student survey (n = 46); student focus group interviews (n = 18); teacher individual interview (n = 2); and analysis of student (n = 46) products, as assessed by 12 teachers) was undertaken to understand the effectiveness of the design principles in supporting students' development of innovation competence.Paired samples t-tests showed significant growth in students' selfperceived innovation competence. Analysis of students' innovative products showed that they met the course goals. Students, teachers, and other stakeholders also reported positive perceptions of the setup and design principles used in the innovation competence instruction. The results showed that the intervention as described is effective for improving students' innovation competence in the domains of study. This study offers several starting points for fostering the development of students' innovation competence in higher education organisations.
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