Applying Competency based Approach for Entrepreneurship education

Today great attention is paid to competency based education and application of this method in entrepreneurship education at academic level as well as other educational environments (Izquierdo, 2008(. current business education programs are strongly criticized for not being in accordance with the requirements of changing business environment. One general criticism is that business education has become too task-oriented and does not emphasize on multi-dimensional complexities of issues (Tarabishy &Solomon, 2005). University professors in different course agreed that academic programs should be compatible with the needs of society (Mulder et al, 2009). In some cases a clear gap between knowledge and skill levels of students can be observed (for instance in cases where their expertise in academic knowledge and skill is not adequate) (Woollacott, 2009). Therefore the goal of this study is to examine the importance of entrepreneurial competencies to identify entrepreneurship education headlines using a competency based approach for IT students. The study is done on two samples on the population; the first sample is comprised of entrepreneurs who are active in the field of Information Technology and Information Technology students in B. A. level. The second sample is made of experts (including academic experts in the field of entrepreneurship Education and entrepreneurship professors). The research methodology is mixed (quantitative and qualitative). In qualitative part, data is gathered using interviews and in the quantitative part questionnaires are applied. Data analysis is done using coding methodology. Also, in order to interpret quantitative data, SPSS software has been used. The results are indicative of the most important entrepreneurial competencies that should be considered in designing entrepreneurship curriculum with competencies approach for IT students.