Entre Camp: accelerated competency development

Blended Intensive Programmes (BIPs) represent a strategic evolution in European higher education, responding to growing demands for accessible yet transformative international experiences. The aim of BIPs is to democratise international opportunities while equipping students with the skills and mindset needed to tackle global and societal challenges (European Commission, n.d.). This aim is well aligned with the vision of Ulysseus European University to create an international, open-to-the-world, person-centered, and entrepreneurial University that will shape Europe’s future.

Since 2022, the Ulysseus Entre Camp has served as a testing ground for this new blended mobility format, engaging 160 master students in four camp implementations in Helsinki, Nice, and Seville. What began as an experimental collaboration between six partner universities has evolved into a refined model that challenges conventional assumptions about international education effectiveness.

The central innovation of Ulysseus Entre Camp lies not in its individual elements but in their integration. By embedding authentic entrepreneurial challenges within a Design Thinking framework and international collaborative structure, the Entre Camp creates what we might call ‘accelerated competency development’ – learning experiences that typically take one semester into intensive week-long encounters. This approach balances the challenge in international education of being accessible while still creating a meaningful impact.

Challenge-based learning

Ulysseus Entre Camp is designed as a three-phase structure. Virtual pre-assignments help students prepare for teamwork while familiarising them with Design Thinking and the challenge themes before students arrive for the five-day intensive experience. International teams of four to six students from eight different universities and disciplines work with dedicated coaches to address real problems presented by local entrepreneurs and other stakeholders. Post-camp portfolios then enable deeper learning reflection while also demonstrating competency development for the programme’s five ECTS credits.

This design reflects Malmqvist’s, Rådberg’s, and Lundqvist’s (2015) conception of challenge-based learning as fundamentally different from traditional problem-solving exercises which typically involve well-defined academic problems with predetermined solutions. Rather than working on hypothetical scenarios, students engage with genuine sociotechnical problems that demand sustainable solutions and stakeholder engagement. The authenticity of these challenges has proved important to the Entre Camp’s impact, offering messy, real-world challenges with multiple possible solutions that purely academic exercises cannot provide.

Scaling innovative educational formats

The evolution of Entre Camp concept reveals important lessons about scaling innovative educational formats. Initial co-creation involving all partner universities generated shared ownership and understanding, resulting in successful early implementations. The initial vision was that the cocreated academic programme of Ulysseus Entre Camp largely remains the same every year, but all the different locations and host universities would be able to add their own contextual flavours in the programme.

However, when one item in the programme is changed, it easily affects the other parts as well. Also, being an organiser and host of the camp brought new responsibilities which were not yet evident when participating in the camp only as a cocreating partner. To tackle this problem, The Ulysseus Entre Camp handbook was created in 2025.

The handbook highlights elements that have been found essential for successful Ulysseus Entre Camp implementation, while leaving enough flexibility for local partners to bring their local customs and context as a learning arena for the international student teams and coaches. In the future it will also provide a scalable model for arranging similar programs in the international university context, also outside the European University Initiative.

An experience transformative in nature

After each Ulysseus Entre Camp students gave feedback through a survey that they were able to answer anonymously. The survey consisted of quantitative rating scale questions (scale from 1 to 5) and open-ended responses.

Student feedback reveals consistently high engagement levels, with participants rating their experience between 4.4 and 4.9 on the five-point scale. Also, recommendation rates consistently exceed 4.6, suggesting students perceive genuine value beyond mere satisfaction.

However, quantitative measures capture only part of the story. Qualitative feedback indicates that students perceived the experience as transformative in nature, extending beyond traditional educational outcomes. One participant’s reflection captures this distinction

Be prepared to be challenged because some of the notions and conceptions that you have coming into this camp process might not be the ones that you leave with afterwards.

The Ulysseus Entre Camp concept appears particularly effective at developing resilience which can be understood as the capacity to navigate ambiguity, act rapidly under pressure, and maintain creativity within constraints (Isichei, Olabosinde, & Shaibu 2024). The Entre Camp coaches consistently observe students’ growing comfort with uncertainty as the week progresses, along with increased willingness to challenge assumptions and propose unconventional solutions. These competencies prove difficult to develop in traditional classroom settings but emerge more naturally within the camp’s intensive, authentic environment.

Perhaps most significantly, the program succeeds in fostering genuine intercultural collaboration rather than mere cultural exposure. This aligns with Jager’s (2025) framework demonstrating how BIPs can foster intercultural competence through their innovative blended format that combines short-term physical mobility with collaborative online learning. Mixed-nationality teams initially struggle with different communication styles, decision-making approaches, and conflict resolution strategies.

However, the requirement to deliver solutions to real stakeholders pushes students to progress from surface-level cultural awareness to the development of practical intercultural competence. This process proves challenging but ultimately empowering, with students reporting increased confidence in international professional contexts.

Broader implications and impact

The Ulysseus Entre Camp’s success emerges from several decisions. The integration of authentic challenges with structured methodology creates fruitful conditions for both creativity and learning. Real commissioners provide authentic problems with real outcomes, enhancing student engagement beyond the levels of traditional academic assignments. Simultaneously, the Design Thinking framework gives structure how to approach the challenge while maintaining space for creativity and critical thinking

Another critical factor of the camp is the intensive nature of the Design Thinking five-day programme. Students consistently report feeling stretched by the demanding schedule, though they also credit this intensity with forcing rapid skill development and enhancing resilience.

The Ulysseus Entre Camp experience offers several insights for international higher education’s evolving landscape. Most fundamentally, it may demonstrate that meaningful international education doesn’t require semester-long mobility periods. When properly structured, intensive experiences can generate competency development and perspective transformation while reaching students who cannot commit to longer periods abroad.

The concept also illustrates the importance of pedagogical coherence in international collaboration. Successful implementations require more than logistical coordination across institutions: they need shared understanding of learning objectives, pedagogy, and success criteria. Additionally, the challenges encountered when the program began rotating and new coaches joined the programme suggest that such understanding must be actively cultivated and maintained.

Ulysseus Entre Camp modelling educational innovation

Four years of Ulysseus Entre Camp implementations reveal both the potential and challenges of innovative international education formats. As European higher education continues evolving toward more flexible, outcome-focused international programming, the Ulysseus Entre Camp offers a valuable case study in systematic program development. It demonstrates that such a learning concept requires sustained commitment to both pedagogical coherence and attention-to-detail in implementation, showing how initial vision must evolve while still maintaining core principles.

The Entre camp’s greatest value may be its demonstration that intensive, well-structured international experiences can achieve learning outcomes traditionally associated with much longer commitments. For students and higher education institutions aiming for accessibility and impact in international education, the Entre Camp concept may represent an encouraging model allowing more students to experience international mobility.

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