Innovation is crucial for higher education to ensure high-quality curricula that address the changing needs of students, labor markets, and society as a whole. Substantial amounts of resources and enthusiasm are devoted to innovations, but often they do not yield the desired changes. This may be due to unworkable goals, too much complexity, and a lack of resources to institutionalize the innovation. In many cases, innovations end up being less sustainable than expected or hoped for. In the long term, the disappointing revenues of innovations hamper the ability of higher education to remain future proof. Against the background of this need to increase the success of educational innovations, our colleague Klaartje van Genugten has explored the literature on innovations to reveal mechanisms that contribute to the sustainability of innovations. Her findings are synthesized in this report. They are particularly meaningful for directors of education programs, curriculum committees, educational consultants, and policy makers, who are generally in charge of defining the scope and set up of innovations. Her report offers a comprehensive view and provides food for thought on how we can strive for future-proof and sustainable innovations. I therefore recommend reading this report.
DOCUMENT
Higher education (HE) is engaged in a variety of educational innovations, as well as professional development initiatives (PDIs) to support teachers in attaining the required expertise. To improve teacher professional learning and development (PLD) and innovation processes, it is important to understand whether, how and why different PLD practices work for different innovations, contexts and populations. However, research is characterized by descriptive, single case studies and lacks a common framework to relate research findings. To address this shortcoming, this study collected and compared a wide variety of cases to develop a typology of practices. The results showed that educational innovations and teacher PLD were typically configured in three ways: (1) the focus is on implementing a new form of education and teacher learning is used as a means to this end, (2) the focus is on teachers’ professional learning and the educational innovations are spin-offs, and (3) the focus is on stimulating innovations and teacher learning is a side-effect. These types of configurations differed regarding the educational innovation, required teacher expertise, professional development initiatives, teacher learning, and outcome measures. The typology serves as a framework that may help to reflect on practices, bridge disciplines, and formulate hypotheses for future research.
LINK
The importance of teaching engineering students innovation development is commonly clearly understood. It is essential to achieve products which are attractive and profitable in the market. To achieve this, an institute of engineering education has to provide students with needed knowledge, skills and attitudes including both technical and business orientation. This is important especially for SME’s. Traditionally, education of engineering provides students with basic understanding how to solve common technical problems. However companies need wider view to achieve new products. Universities of applied Sciences in Oulu and Eindhoven want to research what is the today’s educational situation for this aim, to find criteria to improve the content of the educational system, and to improve the educational system. Important stakeholders are teachers and students within the institute but also key-persons in companies. The research is realized by questionnaires and interviews from which a current situation can be found. The research will also include the opinion of management who give possibilities to change the curriculum. By this research more insight will be presented about how to re-design a current curriculum. The research will act as basis for this discussion in SEFI-conference about formulating a curriculum that includes elements for wide-ranging knowledge and skills to achieve innovations especially in SME’s.
DOCUMENT
In recent years, ArtEZ has worked on a broadly supported strategic research agenda on the themes New Ecologies of Matter (ecological challenges), Social Equity (social-societal issues), (Un)Learning Practices (educational innovations) and (Non)CybernEtic Fabric (technological developments). Building on these strategic themes, the ArtEZ Research Collective as developed an international research strategy to become a valuable partner in the relevant Horizon Europe (HEU) areas of Environment, Industry and Social science and humanities. With its specific knowledge position and approach from arts and creativity, ArtEZ is convinced that it can play a distinctive role in European consortia to tackle various challenges in these areas, in particular from the perspective and research topics of the professorships Fashion and Tactical Design. To achieve its ambitions and goals in its targeted research topics, ArtEZ is convinced that a combination of international connections and local applications is key for successful impact. Building upon existing relations and extending the international research position requires extra efforts, e.g., by developing a strong international framework of state-of-the-art research results, impacts and ambitions. Therefore ArtEZ needs to (further) build on both its international network and its supportive infrastructure. With this proposal ArtEZ is presenting its goals and efforts to work on its international recognition as a valuable research partner, and to broaden its international network in cutting-edge research and other stakeholders. With regards to its supporting infrastructure, ArtEZ has the ambition to expand the impact of the Subsidy Desk to become a professional partner to the professorships. This approach requires a further professionalization and extension of both the Subsidy Desk organization and its services, and developing and complementing skills, expertise and competences to comply to the European requirements.
What new strategies, knowledge, skills and business models will businesses need; and what new policies and initiatives need to be developed to make the region ready for a successful future. Hanze will focus on innovation in energy transition and specially in small and medium businesses and their needs for the future.[Project in development]The project aims to maintain a competitive regional economy and to strengthen innovation support capacity by ensuring access to a strong and adaptable workforce with the necessary skills to support future growth. This will be done by increasing regional knowledge on future skills needs amongst SMEs and bridging existing skills gaps. Innovation support mechanisms and educational practices will be tested allowing for adjustments and the development of a robust future-proofed flexible system. The project will give authorities new tools within skills development, which are specially connected to the region's smart specialisation strategy. This will contribute to an increased innovation capacity in North Sea Region by aligning these two strategic elements in a regional perspective.Hanze will focus on strengthening new developments in energy transition by exploring growth potential of cross-border and cross-sectoral aspects. Expertise in value chain and systems innovations including cluster systems development and digital/other technologies will be leveraged to support exploration of growth potential and needs of the energy industry. HZ will co-create and evaluate new strategies, knowledge, skills and business models with clusters and businesses in energy transition sector.
The project aims to maintain a competitive regional economy and to strengthen innovation support capacity by ensuring access to a strong and adaptable workforce with the necessary skills to support future growth. This will be done by increasing regional knowledge on future skills needs amongst SMEs and bridging existing skills gaps. Innovation support mechanisms and educational practices will be tested allowing for adjustments and the development of a robust future-proofed flexible system. The project will give authorities new tools within skills development, which are specially connected to the region's smart specialisation strategy. This will contribute to an increased innovation capacity in North Sea Region by aligning these two strategic elements in a regional perspective.Hanze will focus on strengthening new developments in energy transition by exploring growth potential of cross-border and cross-sectoral aspects. Expertise in value chain and systems innovations including cluster systems development and digital/other technologies will be leveraged to support exploration of growth potential and needs of the energy industry. HZ will co-create and evaluate new strategies, knowledge, skills and business models with clusters and businesses in energy transition sector.
