Dual-wheel Drive and Collaborative Education: AI-empowered Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education for Emerging Engineering

In response to practical problems in innovation and entrepreneurship education for emerging engineering in local application-oriented universities — including weak industrial alignment, limited practice scenarios, and insufficient integration of artificial intelligence (AI) literacy — this paper focuses on mechanical and electrical majors and develops a dual-wheel education framework: the endogenous drive of theoretical and practical teaching, the exogenous drive of industrial demand and skills competitions. It integrates AI technology throughout teaching, practice and evaluation, and establishes a school-enterprise-government collaborative education mechanism. In line with the development needs of Quanzhou’s intelligent manufacturing industry, teaching reforms are implemented across four dimensions: curriculum system optimisation, practice platform construction, teaching staff development and evaluation mechanism improvement. Taking mechanical and electrical majors at Quanzhou University of Information Engineering as the pilot, this study adopts an action research approach and evaluates implementation effects through questionnaire surveys, practical performance assessment and competition outcome analysis. The pilot findings suggest that this model may improve students’ engineering practical skills and innovation and entrepreneurship literacy, and offers a potential practical approach for emerging engineering education reform in local application-oriented universities.