Research on the Construction of “Practice and Innovation” Integration System and Model Innovation in Higher Education Institutions—A Case Study of Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology ()
1. Introduction
Since the introduction of mass entrepreneurship and innovation in 2014, Chinese colleges and universities have set off a wave of innovation and entrepreneurship education reform, and after eight years of exploration and attempts, each university has formed its own distinctive model and system in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship education. Innovation and entrepreneurship are deeply integrated into the talent cultivation system of colleges and universities, forming multi-modal and multi-dimensional integration and innovation modes such as integration of thinking and creation, integration of specialization and creation, integration of industry and education, integration of real creation and integration of organization. The deepening of practical teaching is the starting point and the ending point of university education. In order to carry out the original mission of “dual innovation”, we must pay great attention to the practicality of dual innovation education, i.e. the close integration of innovation and entrepreneurship education with practice. In this paper, we analyze the current situation and mode of the integration of innovation and entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities, and put forward our thoughts on the existing problems and the mode of integration of innovation and entrepreneurship in Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology.
2. The Current Status of Research on Exploring the Integration Model of Practice and Innovation in Colleges
In the research of the integration of practice and innovation, many experts and scholars have accumulated rich results by combining practical investigation and reflection.
On the one hand, in terms of concept and architecture, Pan Lian (2018) pointed out that the concept of innovation and entrepreneurship should be highlighted in the existing professional practice teaching, while the articulation system and management mechanism of integration should be improved. An Minbing & Zhu Guoquan (2020) pointed out that it is necessary to continue deep integration in terms of strengthening the construction of the integration of industry-university-research, expanding the connotation of innovation and entrepreneurship education, improving the guarantee system, and creating a good atmosphere. Yu Jie and Liang Xuesheng (2022) proposed to integrate innovation and entrepreneurship training into professional curriculum education based on the reform of tour management curriculum, and according to the idea of “combining theory and practice, systematic and phased”, three-dimensional coverage is applied to classroom and extra-curricular, on-campus and off-campus, and four kinds of three-dimensional teaching modes are built from multiple perspectives, multiple occasions, multiple scenes and multiple opportunities. The four modes and paths of practical teaching are built from multiple perspectives, occasions, scenarios and opportunities.
On the other hand, in terms of model innovation, competition-driven, for example, the reform of social work education and teaching in a university in Anhui Province takes the Challenge Cup competition as the leader, deeply grasps the innovation and entrepreneurship education, and creates a three-dimensional practice teaching platform, which has achieved outstanding results (An & Zhu, 2020); Case combination, such as combining the reform implementation process of software engineering major, exploring the structure and usage of the case base for the integration of innovation and entrepreneurship and professional practice, and finally illustrating the effect of practical teaching reform through questionnaire data (Wang & Du, 2022). Comprehensive practice mode system construction, such as a university takes tourism management course as an example to explore problem-oriented case analysis practice type, enterprise field practice type, situational simulation experiment practice type and innovation and entrepreneurship incubation base practice type (Yu & Liang, 2022).
These studies, in terms of theoretical structure and practical model exploration, provide important references for the educational model of integrating innovation and entrepreneurship with practice. As a university integrating art and engineering, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology has its own distinct characteristics, unique in innovation and entrepreneurship and practical education. Taking this as an example, it can provide ideas for the practical innovation and integration of other art colleges and universities. In this paper, on the basis of experts and scholars to explore this issue, combined with the experience of Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology practice and innovation integration education, from the perspective of system construction to model innovation, briefly discuss some thoughts on the combination of innovation and innovation of mass innovation education.
3. Analysis of the Main Modes of Integration of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education and Practical Teaching in Colleges
In fact, the integration of innovation and entrepreneurship education and practical teaching in colleges and universities is the inevitable result of the joint promotion of many factors, and there are various modes of integration of innovation and entrepreneurship education and practical teaching in colleges and universities. This paper mainly analyzes four major modes used by colleges and universities, namely, competition-driven, situational simulation, enterprise or social practice, achievement transformation or incubation.
3.1. Competition-Driven
Competition-driven is one of the most common and most applied modes of real innovation integration in universities. Especially with the working group of evaluation and management system of university competitions issued by Chinese Higher Education Society, the ranking of national ordinary university student competitions, especially the Internet+, Challenge Cup and other subject competitions. In the competition activities, students can teach well to integrate innovation and entrepreneurship and practical teaching based on their major, especially after the competition, the transformation of the results of the competition projects on the ground, which is the implementation of the original mission of China’s innovation and entrepreneurship education. At present, under the competition-driven model, the types of competition projects chosen by universities have far exceeded the competitions in the published rankings, and universities have expanded the categories and numbers of competitions in combination with their professional directions and fields, and implemented the competition to promote teaching and learning.
The competition-driven model also has some disadvantages and shortcomings. First, the competitions are mostly project-based and competitive, and their scope of participation and evaluation mechanisms limits the number of teams and the actual number of participants. Secondly, from the category of competitions, mainly discipline competitions, which are based on disciplines and majors, the competition process is better integrated with the elements of innovation and entrepreneurship, but there are also problems such as too strong professionalism and slightly weak comprehensive.
3.2. Scenario Simulation
Scenario simulation is generally carried out in the on-campus laboratory or practical training environment, and the virtual environment constructed by simulating some or all of the real scenes in enterprises and reality through software and hardware for practical teaching, which is a more typical way of practical teaching. The application of scenario simulation under the mode of real-innovation integration, mainly has the following aspects.
One is to focus on professional practical teaching, and embed part of the innovative and entrepreneurial concepts and ideas in the normal professional practical training and experimental sessions, so as to achieve the integration of real and creative.
Second, special innovation and new entrepreneurship courses are offered in the experimental environment, which are class courses, including training of innovative thinking, entrepreneurial enterprise operation simulation and other innovation and entrepreneurship courses with practical nature and characteristics, as an organic part of the practical talent training system.
Third, for the positioning and characteristics of their respective schools, targeted development of virtual experimental software in line with the characteristics of universities, such software systems are not necessarily presented in a special course, mainly through the experience, show the actual process of the featured areas, etc.
In particular, the virtual simulation laboratory built through simulation technology can be implemented in a three-dimensional, visual and interactive way for immersive teaching. It has a good application effect in the current scenario simulation teaching.
Scenario simulation can build a bridge between theory and practice, in the virtual environment, repeatable practice exercises, better integration of theory and practice, especially in the simulation of some professional experimental environment, can be better temporal effect, but for some professions with complex environmental elements, scenario simulation is difficult to fully simulate the reality of the scene, so the evaluation of the practical effect is inconsistent.
3.3. Corporate or Social Practice
Compared with scenario simulation, enterprise and social practice is a kind of scenario conversion, which puts the internship and practice scenarios into the real environment. At present, universities conduct enterprise or social practice, mainly divided into the following models and types.
Firstly, the purpose of the internship is to clarify the focus of the current university study and the skills that should be possessed through the understanding of the future work environment and positions, generally the professional internship is arranged at the beginning or the first half of the university, and the form is often based on visits and surveys.
Secondly, professional internship, generally with certain professional knowledge and skills, in-depth into the practical environment, the application of the professional knowledge learned, in the learning process, the combination of theory and practice, generally arranged in the middle of the academic period, often using the stage of the internship or project, short-term internship.
Thirdly, it is a comprehensive professional internship, in which the basic professional courses have been completed, and the internship is carried out in order to deepen and test the knowledge and skills learned in practice, and it is usually placed in the second half of the academic year, and the form it takes can be a project or a top job internship.
Finally, it is the graduation internship, which is combined with the needs and employment standards of the enterprises and the professional quality, ability and level of the students, and is generally related to or even combined with the employment of graduates.
The mode of integration of practice and innovation, in the enterprise internship, is mainly reflected in the professional internship, professional comprehensive internship and graduation internship, in which the innovative thinking of students and the application of innovative methods in practice are better reflected, and it is more encouraged to be employed with an entrepreneurial mentality and to make continuous innovation in that position. This is a common internship arrangement and requirement in universities, and the independence of innovation and entrepreneurship is not prominent.
3.4. Results Transformation or Incubation
The content and form of results transformation are rich, including scientific research results of teacher-student cooperation, innovative results of classroom teaching, innovative results based on competition, as well as spontaneous and usual accumulated results of all kinds. No matter what kind of results are transformed, their innovative and entrepreneurial meanings are obvious, which is also an important aspect of the result orientation of innovation and entrepreneurship education.
In order to better promote the transformation of achievements, we support, support, guide and help some projects and achievements with good foundation and practical prospect, and this process we call it incubation, often in various ways such as project-based or platform-based to establish their own incubation system to further promote the transformation of innovative achievements.
The transformation of results is a work that universities attach great importance to. On the platform of Internet plus competition, a number of scientific research results built by teachers and students have been better transformed, such as the project of sharing bicycle, which has become an innovative and entrepreneurial result with high popularity in the current society. The results of students’ innovation and entrepreneurship are also very rich, reflecting the innovative thinking of college students, their deep thinking about their specialties and their design closely integrated with the society. This transformation is often closely combined with students’ entrepreneurial activities, and from the current figure of about 3% entrepreneurship rate of college students, there is still room for this transformation to develop.
4. Analysis of the Problems in the Integration of Practice and Innovation
Colleges and universities embed innovation and entrepreneurship education into the practice teaching process, and adopt a variety of modes of interaction, and students generally report that they get a relatively solid and comprehensive training. However, there are still many deficiencies in the exploration of the integration of innovation and entrepreneurship education and practical teaching in universities. This paper believes that there are differences in the understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation education in universities, innovation and entrepreneurship education lacks a relatively independent system, and the guarantee system of practical innovation and integration is not perfect.
4.1. Differences in the Understanding of Innovative Entrepreneurship Education
The theme of this paper is to study the integration of practice and innovation. In the study, it is found that universities have a deeper understanding of the necessity of practical teaching, while the degree of awareness of innovation and entrepreneurship is not consistent, so the integration between the two is only considered as a concept or notion, and in practice it is mainly practical teaching and integration of innovation concept. The reasons for this are.
Firstly, the discipline and professional system of colleges and universities are more perfect, and the theoretical and practical aspects are already included in the process of talent training. It is enough. Therefore, in the original talent cultivation system, the degree of embedding innovation and entrepreneurship in each university shows a big difference.
Secondly, innovation and entrepreneurship education lacks standards. Unlike the mature discipline system, there are no mandatory implementation standards for innovation and entrepreneurship education to be integrated into the talent cultivation process, except for the basic credit requirements and framework requirements, which gives universities a lot of room for adjustment in carrying out dual-innovation education, and this is one of the reasons for the differences in understanding.
Thirdly, there are still differences in the recognition of entrepreneurship education. On innovation and entrepreneurship education, there is already a consensus on the necessity of innovation education. However, there are some differences in the recognition of entrepreneurship education. There are views that whether encouraging college students to start their own business is in line with the training objectives of their majors and the actual social needs, and that there is some uncertainty about the success rate and necessity of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is obviously one of the goal-oriented of innovation and entrepreneurship education. Such divergence directly leads to the differentiation of the understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship education.
4.2. Innovative Entrepreneurship Education Lacks a Relatively Independent System
In the study of the integration of real innovation and entrepreneurship, we found that the current innovation and entrepreneurship education is “being integrated”, which has been discussed in the previous discussion. The main reason is that some universities have not established a relatively independent innovation and entrepreneurship education system. In the author’s opinion, the establishment of relatively independent innovation and entrepreneurship education system is not to be independent of professional talents training, but to better cultivate students’ innovation consciousness, innovation quality and innovation ability. Thus, it can better serve for professional talent cultivation. At present, the Party and the State position innovation as “the first driving force to lead development, grasping innovation is grasping development, and seeking innovation is seeking the future”. Innovation ability is the goal of training, and entrepreneurship is one of the results of innovation training. In order to implement and grasp innovation and entrepreneurship education, a relatively independent training system is needed to ensure better integration of innovative thinking and cultivation of innovative ability in professional learning.
The lack of a system leads to a lack of systematization in the process of conducting the integration of real innovation. In the previous analysis of the mode of integration of real and creative education, the focus of each university is not uniform, and there is a lack of systematic construction of the integration system of innovation and entrepreneurship and professional practice, and there is a phenomenon of “heavy but not real, fruit but not cause”.
4.3. The Protection System Is Not Perfect
The achievement of the effect of the integration of real creation requires a certain system guarantee. This includes faculty, system, funding, organization, etc.
Firstly, innovative teachers are not the same as traditional professional teachers. Innovative teachers focus on cultivating students’ innovation consciousness and innovation ability in terms of inspiration and guidance of the curriculum, which is one of the current directions of classroom teaching reform, and there is still much room for the introduction and training of this part of teachers in the university faculty.
Secondly, the talent training system of integration of real creation needs a whole set of framework of theoretical courses, practical courses, 2nd classroom, competition and result incubation with corresponding system guarantee.
Thirdly, it needs the cooperation of multiple departments. In the talent cultivation-centered university education system, especially embedded with innovation and entrepreneurship education, a multi-linked guarantee system is needed to ensure the implementation of his plan and the achievement of results. There is also a need for a certain amount of special funds as a guarantee.
5. Suggestions on Building a System for Cultivating Practical and Innovative Integrated Talents
Based on the above understanding, combined with the understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship education and the practice of innovation and integration in Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, the training system of practical innovation and integration talents is built based on the four aspects of training objectives, curriculum system, teaching system and guarantee mechanism, as shown in Figure 1.
5.1. Clarify Training Objectives
Clarify the cultivation objectives of innovation and entrepreneurship education and its positioning in the cultivation of professional talents Clarify the cultivation objectives of innovation and entrepreneurship education, i.e. the cultivation of innovative consciousness, the formation of innovative thinking, the generation of innovative ability, and meet the cultivation requirements of innovative spirit and innovative ability in the cultivation of professional talents.
5.2. Integrating Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education into Talent Training Programs
To formally incorporate innovation and entrepreneurship education into talent training programs. Taking Beijing Institute of Fashion as an example, it clearly proposes to build an innovation and entrepreneurship curriculum system of “basic + professional”, “compulsory + elective”, “theory + practice”, and strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship education in the curriculum. It has implemented the “2 + 2 + 2 + X” innovation and entrepreneurship curriculum teaching system, i.e. two credits of innovation and entrepreneurship foundation as a public course of the whole school, two credits of innovation and entrepreneurship professional elective course, and two credits of innovation and entrepreneurship public elective course as an integral part of the innovation and entrepreneurship curriculum system.
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Figure 1. A talent training system that integrates practice and innovation.
5.3. Enriching and Improving the Teaching System of Integration of Reality and Innovation
In theoretical teaching, we pay attention to cultivating and inspiring students’ creative consciousness and innovative thinking through case-based teaching and other methods.
In the practical teaching, vertically, we should fully plan the integration and achievement of innovation and entrepreneurship education objectives in the professional internship, professional internship, professional comprehensive internship and graduation internship and other teaching practice. Horizontally, we have to incorporate various methods such as discipline competition, simulation, enterprise internship and achievement transformation into talent training organically, including the recognition of competition credits and the recognition and reward of incubation results.
5.4. Define the Safeguard Mechanism
In terms of faculty, the training and upgrading program of professional faculty is strengthened, especially in the training and upgrading of innovation ability and literacy. In terms of institutional construction, on the basis of clarifying the cultivation objectives of innovation and entrepreneurship education, the process and result assessment of innovation and entrepreneurship education will be strengthened in the process of professional talent cultivation, and will be guaranteed and regulated by means of the system. In terms of funding, special funds are set up to encourage and support the reform in innovation and entrepreneurship education. In terms of organization, an organizational structure of innovation and entrepreneurship education led by university leaders and coordinated by multiple departments is established to ensure the organic integration of innovation and entrepreneurship education and professional practice education.
Fund Project
Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology 2021 Educational Teaching Reform Project Key Projects Model and Innovation of Integrating Innovative and Entrepreneurial Education and Practical Teaching Phase Result (ZDJG-2105).