Innovation and Entrepreneurship Practice: Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning in an Applied Psychology Context

This paper discusses an innovative course that has been offered at Beijing Normal University User eXperience Research Center (BNUX) since 2016. Both teachers and students discover and explore a project-based learning pattern—they collaborate in teams, build to think and turn ideas into reality. They embrace design thinking in innovation and entrepreneurship education and experience entrepreneurial culture in this semester-long course. Student teams work on innovation challenges proposed by corporate partners for three months and deliver functional proof-of-concept prototypes and in-depth documentation that captures the essence of design thinking in innovation and entrepreneurship education and the learning that led to their ideas. Students promote their progress through reviews between teachers and students and between the BNUX and enterprises throughout the entire learning process. Several institutions worldwide have adopted this innovative method of project-based learning with global collaboration.