scholarly journals Curating knowledge, creating change:: University Knowledge Center, Kosovo national transition

IFLA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Mary M. Somerville ◽  
Anita Mirjamdotter ◽  
Edmond Harjizi ◽  
Elham Sayyad-Abdi ◽  
Michele Gibney ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
National Development ◽  
Experience Design ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
Theory To Practice ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Collaborative System Design ◽  
The University ◽  
Usage Processes

A collaborative system design initiative at the University for Business and Technology in Kosovo aims to make local knowledge visible and to enhance local knowledge creation, within the university and throughout the country. Since its inception in 2015, design activities aimed to activate systems through modeling the global knowledge landscape, technology enabled systems, and human activity processes. Within the framework of Informed Systems, application of Informed Learning Theory and Information Experience Design (IXD) guided prototyping systems that informed building an institutional repository named the UBT Knowledge Center. The knowledge vision anticipates that sustained curation, organization, discovery, access, and usage processes will accelerate academic engagement, national development, and global visibility, over time and with practice to further theory-to-practice and practice-to-theory.

scholarly journals The UBT Knowledge Center:A Collaborative Design Approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Edmond Hajrizi ◽  
Mary Somerville ◽  
Anita Mirijamdotter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Academic Library ◽  
The United States ◽  
Design Approach ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University

In setting the institutional vision for University for Business and Technology in 2001, founder Dr. Edmond Hajrizi sought to educate Kosovo students to become active contributors to the society and in the workplace, within the country, the Balkans region, and beyond. The UBT Knowledge Center initiative extends the founding vision of national development through higher education. Since local knowledge, identity, and learning are necessarily situated, Kosovar students, faculty, staff, and administrators serve as topical experts and international educators from Sweden and the United States serve as design facilitators. Participatory design commenced in April 2017 when international faculty from Sweden and the United States co-taught a graduate level course, Information Systems Analysis, Design, and Modelling, at the Pristina campus. Working with UBT administrators, directors, managers, and librarians, students worked in teams to co-design three essential parts of a holistic Knowledge Center ecosystem: a digital environment to advance local knowledge visibility, an organizational environment to enhance boundary crossing collaboration, and a digital academic library environment to enable discovery of and access to published academic scholarship. Following these ‘learn by doing’ instructional activities, exploratory knowledge management discussions produced a Knowledge Center concept paper in July 2017, with funding from the Fulbright Specialist Program. The white paper recognizes the social context of learning – that knowledge is acquired and understood through action, interaction, and sharing with others. It thereby anticipates the social relationships necessary for information exchange and knowledge creation, oftentimes enabled by technology, for knowledge incubation in the university and beyond. This collaborative design approach anticipates continuing to convene multidisciplinary conversations and to integrate interdisciplinary coursework into realization of the University’s founding knowledge vision which recognizes the critical importance of developing new and more complex ways for connecting people, information, and technology in the university and with the society. In response, the UBT Knowledge Center aims to foster knowledge creation which curates and preserves intellectual, cultural, national, and regional resources for future generations.

From theory to practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-188
Author(s):  
Aimi Meen
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Theory To Practice ◽  
The University

Aimi Meen, Senior Midwifery Lecturer at the University of the West of England, analyses current midwifery skills and how they simulate in the 21st century

scholarly journals International business research challenges in Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 188-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdoulkadre Ado ◽  
Roseline Wanjiru
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Culturally Sensitive ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Business Research ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Research Challenges ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Observation Method

Purpose This paper aims to explore the challenges researchers in/on Africa face when conducting research on the continent. It examines the reasons behind Africans’ relatively limited contribution to the business literature in the global sphere and why not culturally sensitive and nuanced research on Africa is spreading unchallenged. Design/methodology/approach The study combines knowledge creation and institutional theories to explain why African business scholars struggle in researching the continent and in contributing significantly to global knowledge creation. It also explores the debate about why Africa’s narratives in business seem dominated by not culturally sensitive and nuanced voices and approaches. It uses a participant observation method. Findings The study found that African scholars have not yet contributed significantly to global knowledge creation because of Africa’s institutional weaknesses and lack of government support for research, coupled with challenges at the interviewing, organizational and scholars’ levels. The study points to the specificities of the continent as well as to African interviewees’ particularities and the type of interactions with the researchers. The paper proposes new avenues to address those multilevel challenges and offers key lessons for future studies. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to systematically investigate the fundamental reasons behind business research challenges in/on Africa from knowledge creation and institutional standpoints. This study also contributes to the growing debate on Africans’ meager contribution to business literature as well as the controversy regarding culturally sensitive vs not culturally sensitive knowledge creation on Africa. Finally, it proposes avenues to understanding and overcoming those challenges.

scholarly journals (Un-)shackling the University in the City

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Kistner
Keyword(s):  
National Development ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Corporate Management ◽  
Management Styles ◽  
African City ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
University Of Pretoria ◽  
The University ◽  
The City ◽  
Corporate Partnerships

This article examines the relation between the University of Pretoria and the City of Tshwane, outlining seven different kinds of relation as they have taken shape historically. The first type relation between the University and the City presented here, establishes correspondences in public architecture at the height of apartheid modernity, between structures marking and shaping political convergences. The second type of relation is premised on the walling in and fencing off of the University from the City; the Metro musings exhibition inaugurating the ‘Capital Cities’ project looks across the divides thus cemented, from within the confines of the University. The third type of relation is that of ‘Community Engagement’ culminating in the annual Mandela Day activities, impelled by ideas on the Developmental State featuring in the National Development Plan. In the fourth type of relation, corporate models of municipal governance find common cause with the corporate management styles of the University, expressed in corporate partnerships combining a ‘University of Excellence’ with ‘the African City of Excellence’. The strategies envisaged for social intervention emerging from this ‘partnership’ form a sixth type of relation between the University and the City. In the process of pitting property and law against poverty and lawlessness, new civic challenges are emerging for transformative constitutionalism and for the University. In both arenas, this article concludes, what is at stake is a seventh type of relation between the University and the City – outside of the ‘legal’-‘illegal’ distinction. For the University, in particular, this would entail a productive idea of ‘dissensus’.

scholarly journals Surrounded by science: The Researchers' Gallery at Malmö University Library

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-17
Author(s):  
Annsofie Olsson ◽  
Lotti Dorthé
Keyword(s):  
Learning Environment ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Research Communication ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
University Library ◽  
Process And Outcome ◽  
Informal Setting ◽  
The University

The Researchers' Gallery at Malmö University Library shows current research in exhibitions, co-created by librarians and researchers. The library invites all visitors to take part in and learn more about the research process and outcome. In an academic yet informal setting, the library offers a credible space for research communication. The Researchers' Gallery is a space for students, researchers and the society to meet, and encourage cross-border knowledge creation. The Researchers’ Gallery has become a platform for continuing collaboration between researchers and between researchers and librarians. Exhibited research now has a natural and an integrated place in the learning environment of the library and at the university.

Pay-to-Play

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Kraski
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Research Fellow ◽  
Automotive Company ◽  
The Us ◽  
The University ◽  
Harsh Reality

Pay-to-Play provides an accessible approach toward understanding two systems for knowledge creation and dissemination that are embedded in the US legal system, namely private, nonprofit universities and copyright law. Pay-to-Play identifies the harsh reality that an expansive body of academic works remains locked away behind for-profit paywalls. Accessing these works for individuals is prohibitively expensive and is usually only made possible through even more expensive institutional memberships. As a result, most people are unnecessarily excluded from the innovation process, which lies at the very core of the Constitution’s Copyright Clause. Attorney Ryan Kraski, Esq. is a former lecturer and research fellow at the University of Cologne, Germany and is currently in-house counsel to a large automotive company .

Ezine and iRadio as Knowledge Creation Metaphors for Scaffolding Learning in Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces

2012 ◽  
pp. 1323-1341
Author(s):  
Steve Dillon ◽  
Deidre Seeto ◽  
Anne Berry
Keyword(s):  
Blended Learning ◽  
Student Voice ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Collaborative Approach ◽  
Experience Design ◽  
Learning Spaces ◽  
Learning Space ◽  
Scaffolding Learning

eZine and iRadio represent knowledge creation metaphors for scaffolding learning in a blended learning environment. Through independent and collaborative work online participating students experience a simulated virtual publishing space in their classrooms. This chapter is presented as an auto-ethnographic account highlighting the voices of the learning designer and the teacher. Using an iterative research design, evidence is provided for three iterations of each course. A collaborative approach to the development, planning, implementation, and evaluation of two tertiary music elective courses between lecturers, tutors, learning and technological designers is narrated. The student voice is embedded in the methodology, which involved an innovative approach that blends software development and pedagogy in iterations of software and experience design. The chapter describes how the teachers and learning designers translate these data into action and design. A blended learning space was incorporated within each of these elective music courses and the movement between these learning spaces is described and problematized. The research suggests that learning design, which provides real world examples and resources integrating authentic task design, can provide meaningful and engaging experiences for students. The dialogue between learning designers and teachers and iterative review of the learning process and student outcomes has engaged students meaningfully to achieve transferable learning outcomes.

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