There is an increased focus on relevance of higher
education. Mostly it is about enhanced job opportunities or job
advancements for the individual. However, relevance of higher
education may also be towards solving important issues or problems
at a workplace. There are some necessary preconditions as to how an
educational activity becomes relevant. Firstly, the student must be
capable to discover how generic knowledge and acquired skills may or
may not apply to concrete situations at work. This requires
experience, understanding of the norms and culture of the
organisation and a certain form of practical intelligence. Secondly,
the conditions at work place must be conducive to innovation and
change in various ways. In this article, we present a case study
where employee turnover and lack of effective training routines were
a major efficiency constraint in a Norwegian firm. With constant
competition, changes in markets and other factors that influence the
sustainability of an organization, cutting costs, such as high
turnover and the time from being newcomer to being fully operative
in the job. The responsible for training activities in the firm
realized that additional formal education at the higher education
level was needed, and he decided to enrol in a Knowledge Management
study program at The Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences in
order to learn how he could improve knowledge management and
learning processes of new employees at his workplace. The case study
ultimately demonstrates how crucial the interplay between content
and form of education on one hand and specific conditions
facilitating changes and improvements at work on the other is for
the relevance in formal higher education narrative.
Collaborative Robots and Knowledge Management - A Short Review