Circular economy design forum - Introducing entrepreneurial mindset and circularity to teaching

The Circular Economy Design Forum (CEDF) is an EIT RawMaterials educational project aimed at incorporating an entrepreneurial mind-set into engineering education, particularly in topics related to circular economy (CE). As part of this initiative, a new course was developed as a platform to promote a dialog between students, industry and academia. To use this educational platform effectively, a "Training the trainers" event was organized where teaching staff learned how to integrate an entrepreneurial mind-set into courses with technical content and how to support student innovation capabilities. In this paper, the objective is to explore the impact on the mind-set and motivation of students when: i) a circular thinking is promoted though iterative project work within the circular economy context, and ii) a customer-centric approach is incorporated in an engineering course, by letting the students identify real industrial needs together with stakeholders. According to the student's feedback, most of the participants (15/18) felt that the course supported well their learning on CE topics and enhanced their study motivation. However, it was also evident that additional support is needed for timid students that have trouble contacting stakeholders directly.