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The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to study which perceived and attained entrepreneurial competences acquired by students while developing a business plan are rated most highly; and second, to analyse the differences observed in entrepreneurial competences, depending on whether the business plan developed is real or fictitious.

To analyse the role played by business plans in perceptions and attainment of competence, data were collected from students enrolled on a final project course of a bachelor’s degree, specifically the Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and Management at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. The course in question focussed on entrepreneurship and business plans. The data on perceived and attained competences were obtained through questionnaires and assessment rubrics, respectively. Mean comparison analyses were conducted to investigate any differences in entrepreneurial competences existing between students developing real or fictitious business plans.

The paper finds evidence that the process of creating a business plan results in entrepreneurial competence being highly rated and that whether the business plan is real or fictitious does not affect the level of entrepreneurial competence.

A longitudinal study will be required to analyse how entrepreneurial competences evolve during the business plan creation process.

This paper finds that few studies have been conducted to explore entrepreneurial competences in relation to business plan development and shows that more complete research is required. Moreover, both perceived and achieved competences are considered, an analysis not previously carried out.

The aim of this article is to provide evidence about how the acquisition of competencies through internships influence student learning process results, and about whether learning process results are affected by the gender differences, by considering two sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the 2030 United Nations’ Agenda: Gender Equality (SDG 5) and Quality Education (SDG 4).

The study was carried out on a sample of 273 interns and their supervisors on the bachelor’s degree program in Tourism and Hospitality Management at the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management Sant Ignasi who carried out curricular internships during the 2016–2020 academic years. The university internship and mobility service sends supervisors a questionnaire, the purpose of which is to rate how well students have acquired the competencies and achieved the learning process results during their internship. The supervisors complete and return the questionnaire once the student has completed the internship.

The findings confirm that learning results appear to be positively influenced by certain competencies, especially personal ones such as orientation toward achievement and initiative and entrepreneurial spirit. Other results show the effect of the gender differences, as female students obtain better learning results than male students. Supervisors’ gender also seems to affect results.

The research will help improve the design of internship-based programs of study.

The analysis provides an innovative research and contributes knowledge on the relation between competencies and learning results in the tourism and hospitality education sector in the field of internships and on the role of the gender dimension.

The role of government in the global digital transformation is to ensure that digital infrastructure is reliable and efficient enough to guarantee an entrepreneurial ecosystem for investment in innovation and startups. This paper presents a case study showing how local policies have been used to create an effective startup ecosystem in Barcelona. This paper aims to provide a detailed analysis of the key elements of the startup ecosystem, including the role of local government.

This study uses an exploratory case research approach and proposes a theoretical framework to study the Barcelona innovation ecosystem, drawing on interviews, research observations and an analysis of the literature.

By applying its conceptual framework tools, the research is able to identify the key elements making up the startup ecosystem and classify the impact of digital transformation policies into three stages: creating the ecosystem, fostering feedback within the ecosystem by encouraging the first generation of entrepreneurs to interact with the second and third and attracting foreign capital and talent to this innovation ecosystem.

The novelty of this work lies in its time frame and geographical scope, as it provides an analysis of the digital transformation policies in Barcelona’s local startup ecosystem over a 30-year period. This research offers deeper insight into the role of public policies in the startup ecosystem in Barcelona, as well as the impact of digital transformation policies on startup ecosystems in general.

The aim of this article is to propose and test a structural model of relationships between generic and specific competencies and entrepreneurial competencies in order to assess students' learning.

The study was carried out on a sample of 337 students enrolled on the entrepreneurship specialisation of the final bachelor's degree project course on the Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration and Management at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. A questionnaire was designed to gather information on students' perception of their level of acquisition of the different groups of competencies. The partial least squares (PLS) multivariate technique was used to analyse the model.

The results confirm that there are significant relationships between the different groups of competencies. Specifically, it shows that generic competencies influence specific competencies and that there is a strong relationship between systemic and professional competencies and entrepreneurial competencies. It also shows that the experience variable contributes positively to different competency groups, while the gender and age variables have no effect on the development of entrepreneurial competencies.

The study provides relevant information to the academic world on different factors that affect competency development.

The analysis provides an innovative research and contributes knowledge on entrepreneurial competency acquisition, providing an answer to whether generic and specific competencies influence entrepreneurial competencies.

With the growth of digital education, students increasingly interact in a variety of ways. The potential effects of these interactions on their learning process are not fully understood and the outcomes may depend on the tool used. This study explores the communication patterns and learning effectiveness developed by students using two basic synchronous and asynchronous communication tools in e-learning environments, specifically business simulation games.

The authors conduct a quasi-experiment research with 478 online business students, 267 of whom used online discussion forums and 211 interacted via an instant messaging app. The application of learning analytics and text mining on natural language processing allows us to explore the student communication patterns with each of tools and their effectiveness in terms of learning.

The results confirm the complementarity of the communication tools, asynchronous tools being especially the suitable for task-related communication and synchronous ones for speeding up and facilitating student social interactions.

The main value of this research lies in the use of data analytics and text mining to access and analyse the content of student interactions to assess the learning process in greater depth, comparing synchronous and asynchronous learning modes, considering that little is known about the impact of online synchronous interaction or instant messaging, and even less about the different features, content and performance that emerge when these two learner interaction modalities are compared.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of correspondence between the academic training received by students and the demands of the job market. This was achieved by analysing the competences that are developed in internships to provide useful information for universities, students and tourism companies.

A quantitative analysis was carried out using questionnaires administered to the supervisors of students on curricular internships. The level of tourism competences of students on the bachelor degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management at the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management Sant Ignasi was assessed. A descriptive analysis and comparisons of means were carried out to investigate differences in competences between students undertaking internships, according to the hotel department and category.

The results of the study indicate that students undertaking internships improve their competences. Whether they undertake internships in one department or another does not affect the level of achievement of most competences. However, the category of a hotel does influence the level of development of the acquired competences.

A questionnaire should be administered to students on their perceptions of the achievement of competences, as this could be compared with the supervisors’ perceptions.

The study generates extremely valuable information for companies, universities and students, as it reveals which competences are attained and to what extent. Based on these results, universities can adapt their training activities and the hotel industry will have information on learning processes during internships.

The analysis provides an innovative research, a real assessment by employers of the competences attained. It also identifies the need for more research on the subject related to employers’ perceptions of the level of competences that students develop in the workplace.