Effectiveness Evaluation on Entrepreneurship Education

Abstract

In EU there are hundreds and thousands ESF funded projects and several studies of these projects effectiveness have been done, but how many of these studies are focused on changes in entrepreneurship education specially in teachers thinking and action and changes on the organizational level? Note so many. That’s why I try to discover answers to the question: Is it possible and how it is possible to evaluate the Entrepreneurship Education project or program especially when taking teachers changes in thinking and action and changes on the organizational level. In the AUSESBC (Aalto University School of Economics Small Business Center) there is the effectiveness evaluation project, funded by ESF, whom called “Entrepreneurship Education joint and evaluation “YKOONTI. Project has been carried out 1.9.2010 – 30.04.2012 in Finland. The main idea of the project “YKOONTI” is to collect data and evaluate the Entrepreneurship Education ESF funded project’s which have been taken during 2000 – 2010. In this paper there were described some detail of the frame effectiveness evaluation and described one project which was evaluated during the project “YKOONTI”. The project evaluated in this paper was “FIRMA” which was carried in South Finland in the Vocational College “ESEDU”. Researcher has been decided to use in evaluation the frame of Kirkpatricks (1959, 2006) effectiveness evaluation four level model. Model is well known when evaluated effectiveness in management program but not so known when evaluating entrepreneurship education program or project. When thinking why evaluation is important is has been said, “Evaluation is about revealing the value of a project” (ETUI‐REHS Project monitoring and evaluation – guidelines). The EU has been said “The purpose of evaluation is to examine how well a project answers to the need it is done for, that is to evaluate the results and effects of the project. The method of implementation of the evaluation depends, among other things, on the stage it is done in and on who does it. The function of evaluation is also to yield information for the planning of the project, to help in the effective division of resources and to improve the quality of the project.” (European Commission 2004, 9.