Track 5: Innovation in Higher Education
INNOVATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Location: Track 5: Nador 15, 101 - see floor map
Track Chairs:
Gábor Halász • ELTE University Budapest, Hungary and Jussi Kivistö • University of Tampere, Finland
Building and maintaining effective links between education, research, and innovation – the three sides of the ‘knowledge triangle’ – are considered as crucial drivers of economic growth and technological development. Being a crucial part of this triangle, higher education institutions worldwide seek actively innovative forms of delivering learning and new knowledge. This takes place in a societal context which has been for a long time characterized by shifts from regulation to deregulation, from steering to market, from closed to open innovation, and from administration to management.
The core activities of higher education institutions are built around processes creation and transmission of knowledge. Innovativeness in these processes requires that higher education institutions possess capable institutional management, maintain institutional culture open to changes, and enjoy necessary level of autonomy and academic freedom. Similarly, constant and effective interaction with environment (economic, social, cultural, technological), are believed to be an essential boundary condition for innovation in higher education. At the same time, seeking new and effective forms of entrepreneurialism has seemingly become the ‘new normal’ as a dominant mode of operation in higher education institutions.
Under this broad thematic scope, this track searches for submissions (theoretical papers, literature reviews, empirical papers, case studies) that address the diversity of challenges faced by universities and other higher education institutions engaged in innovation-driven development processes, including (but not limited to) the following themes:
- The role of universities in innovation networks and systems.
- Innovative approaches in teaching and learning.
- University-based research & development as a source of innovation.
- Innovation in university leadership and management.
- Entrepreneurial universities as sources of innovation.
- Public policies stimulating university-based innovation.
- Criticisms of innovation-centered approaches in higher education.
