With Fontys' new educational developments we became part of the project called 'BILOBA'. The principal outlines of this new education are based on developing competences, communication by ICT and setting up a major-minor educational system. Fontys has already developed 40 minors with topics related to several areas from institutes' backgrounds. One of the minor courses is 'Strategic Innovation'. The main goal of this minor is to make students competent to contribute to innovation in the SME's. Students will acquire relevant knowledge as well as relevant competences for developing innovation in companies. The outline of the minor is 50 % knowledge development and 50% project work, where the knowledge is used in practice. New in the project is the so-called 'Innovation Simulator'. In this simulator as part of the project students will be confronted with the real world of initiating innovation in the context of a real company. Role-play is an important element to this simulator. We need to learn more about this approach. We have done some evaluations during the spring of 2007 and have found some imperfections, which will be changed in June of 2007/2008 as an outcome of an evaluation with all of the participants.
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Introduction Innovation is crucial for companies who have to react to constantly changing markets. Several national and European research institutes stress the importance of developing innovation for small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). This was a trigger to design a minor on strategic innovation for different disciplines - technical and economic departments - of the Fontys University of Applied Sciences. It prepares students to be more competent to take initiatives in developing innovation. The newly designed education should be an answer to the question of how to help companies to become more able to adapt to new changes in the market by providing them with higher educated personnel, who have developed competences on strategic innovation. The starting point for the research is the perceived effectiveness of teaching students to take part in developing innovation at SMEs. More specifically, the question is how to develop action-oriented learning environments to develop competences for innovation development. Research The central research question of this thesis is: In what way could a competence-based and action-oriented learning environment on innovation development in SMEs be designed? This research question provides a basis for evaluating three implementations of the minor learning program (30 EC) on strategic innovation. Findings of the research indicate the importance of educating students about innovation. Educational strategies such as partnering learners with SME staff, simulation exercises, and hands-on exercises all contribute to students' analytical skills. 'Real world' experience in corporate settings helps students bridge the gap between theory and practice, and consequently prepares them to be competitive in their chosen employment. In the period from 2006 till 2009, three academic years were spend to teach students knowledge and competences on strategic innovation. The parameters evaluated are relevance and effectiveness and the system to be analysed is the minor 'strategic innovation'. These two parameters are described as follows: Relevance Teachers and students consider all teaching elements of the minor required to adequately prepare for contributions to innovation development in SMEs relevant. Key persons from SMEs believe that such knowledge and competences are important for companies to increase market competitiveness through innovation. Effectiveness Students develop perceptions on how innovation developments should be initiated in SMEs. They learn how to analyse companies for indicators of and preparation for changes. Students are capable of formulating an innovation development advice for companies, and explain how current activities could be changed to improve corporate success. These parameters are the focus of the measuring method. Optimization of the parameters improves the learning conditions. There is a relation between the two parameters and the variables of a conceptual model with which data can be categorised. Conclusions and recommendations The thesis concludes with a model to analyse the different positions and perspectives of the stakeholders. It is also used for designing a competence-based and action-oriented program. During the research, it became clear that teachers were having a major role in the learning processes of students to change them from rather inexperienced in strategic innovation, into being experienced to the level of starting professionals. Teachers must therefore have many different abilities/competences. For these teachers, it is important that they have - to a certain extent - an expertise in the field of study so they are able to coach and lecture their students properly. Therefore it is necessary that they have their networks with companies on this matter, which enables them to discuss the reality of innovation in the company. Next to the ability to understand the content, teachers must have the ability to determine the starting level of the students of different disciplines joining the minor and choose lecture and coaching conditions with which each student can learn effectively. Teachers therefore must be able to use several strategies of teaching. Students themselves also need to be experienced in interdisciplinary cooperation to work in strategic innovation projects. From these multidisciplinary approaches, teachers must be able to guarantee learning effectiveness to the major goal of the minor education. In order to do so, teachers need to collaborate themselves with their colleagues and agree to the formulated conditions of the minor education. The conclusions as presented from the data of the research are focussed on the teacher being the provider of knowledge and the "manager" of learning activities of students. The main success factors of these conclusions can be formulated as follows. 1. Teachers need to get the opportunity to become adapted to new fields of study in order to have a relevant contribution. 2. Teachers must use their network to find companies that fit to the goals of the minor. 3. Teachers need to determine the match of complexity of the minor and minimum conditions for students to join. 4. Teachers must understand how to help students to work interdisciplinary. 5. Teachers must adapt to new teaching and learning strategies to make the educational processes effective. 6. Teachers in a multidisciplinary teaching and learning context need to be informed on the background of students to make their teaching more effective. 7. Teachers must be able to present the specific theme of their lectures in the context of the goal of the minor to make their teaching activities effective. 8. Teachers from various disciplines working in a multidisciplinary minor need to work interdisciplinary with their colleagues. 9. Teachers must agree to the formulations of the competences. Universities of applied sciences mostly educate young professionals in the region they are situated in. They need to feel the responsibility to follow the needs of companies, like competences of starting professionals on innovation development, and give teachers the opportunities to make improvements of the education with which starting students are being prepared to become starting professionals in companies.
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How can the grower and the supplier in the greenhouse horticulture industry gain competitive advantage through radical innovation? The challenge lies in time- to-market, in customer relationship, in developing new product/market combinations and in innovative entrepreneurship. Realizing this ambition requires strengthening the knowledge base, stimulating innovation, entrepreneurship and education. It also requires professionalizing people. In this paper an innovation and entrepreneurial educational and research programme is introduced. This KITE120-programme aims at strengthening multidisciplinary collaboration between enterprise, education and research. It helps making the step from ambition to action, and from incremental to radical innovation. We call this an 'Amazing Jump'.
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There is increasing interest for the use of Virtual Reality (VR) in the field of sustainable transportation and urban development. Even though much has been said about the opportunities of using VR technology to enhance design and involve stakeholders in the process, implementations of VR technology are still limited. To bridge this gap, the urban intelligence team of NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences developed CycleSPEX, a Virtual Reality (VR) simulator for cycling. CycleSpex enables researchers, planners and policy makers to shape a variety of scenarios around knowledge- and design questions and test their impact on users experiences and behaviour, in this case (potential) cyclists. The impact of infrastructure enhancements as well as changes in the surrounding built environment can be tested, analysed an evaluated. The main advantage for planners and policy makers is that the VR environment enables them to test scenarios ex-ante in a safe and controlled setting.“The key to a smart, healthy and safe urban environment lies in engaging mobility. Healthy cities are often characterized by high quality facilities for the active modes. But what contributes to a pleasant cycling experience? CycleSPEX helps us to understand the relations between cyclists on the move and (designed) urban environments”
