The contribution of higher education-based technology start-up incubators to the co-production of knowledge, innovation and growth

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 253-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Paul Buckley ◽  
Stephen Davis

Start-up incubators are one of a number of micropolicy interventions used by states to support their technology entrepreneurs. Since 2000, the number of incubators in the United States has almost trebled while that in Europe has more than doubled. This article outlines the challenges involved in attempting to evaluate the contribution of the higher education technology start-up incubator process. It advocates theory-based evaluation (TBE) methodology as a possible solution for effective evaluation (and policy learning) in complex research settings such as this, where a study is unable, for myriad reasons, to meet the stringent requirements of experimental research design. TBE delivers findings on the contribution of the multiple factors influencing a result, thus showing whether the incubation process made a contribution to an observed result and in what way. An exploratory case study is used in this article to illustrate how the proposed TBE approach could work.

EAD em FOCO ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Germana Costa Paixão ◽  
Ana Ciléia Pinto Teixeira Henriques ◽  
Francisco Fábio Castelo Branco ◽  
Eloisa Maia Vidal

As práticas de formação que incentivam o desenvolvimento das habilidades afetivas em estudantes têm sido avaliadas no contexto de ensino a distância no Brasil. O estudo tem como objetivo apresentar práticas formativas e relacionais desenvolvidas no curso de Ciências Biológicas na modalidade a distância de uma universidade estadual no Ceará. É um estudo descritivo-reflexivo em forma de estudo de caso que discute experiências em andamento, sendo estas: Monitoria Acadêmica; Vida em Foco; Ciência na Escola e Musicalizando a Biologia. As atividades têm procurado desenvolver nos alunos o espírito de colaboração e da experiência de realidade em que, em um curto espaço de tempo, estarão inseridos. Acredita-se que, dessa forma, se permite um ensino mais crítico e reflexivo, no qual novas ferramentas são oportunizadas e que podem romper a hierarquia ainda persistente entre professores e alunos. Palavras-chave: Ensino; Atitude; Educação a distância; Educação superior; Tecnologia da educação.Beyond the Distance Education: Formation and Relational Practice in a Biological Sciences CourseAbstract Training practices that encourage the development of affective skills in students have been valued in the context of distance learning (DL) in Brazil. The study aims to provide formative and relational practices developed in the course of Biological Sciences in the distance mode of a state university in Ceara. It is descriptive-reflective research in the form of case study that discusses the following ongoing experiments: Academic Monitoring; Life in Focus; Science in School and Musicalizing Biology. The activities have sought to develop in students the spirit of collaboration and the experience of reality in which they, in a short time, will be placed. It is believed that  this way allows more critical and reflective teaching, in which new tools become available for DL that will break the persistent hierarchy between teachers and students.Keywords: Teaching; Attitude; Distance education; Higher education; Education technology.


Author(s):  
Ute S. Lahaie ◽  
Jacqueline M. Mumford

Many universities in the United States are working to incorporate innovative 21st century skills, new active learning pedagogical approaches, and technology. Creating new physical and virtual spaces requires agile faculty professional for technology-centric experiences. Designing and offering meaningful professional development to faculty members in new virtual and physical learning technology-centric environments is a challenge. This case study explores the journey of one higher education institution in the Midwest as they implemented new technology-centric strategies, initiatives, and support. Data from faculty participants indicate the program's success and establish an agenda for future research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-91
Author(s):  
Angelina M. Gomez

The underrepresentation of female Administrators in higher education is not decreasing even though education continues to be a field dominated by women. The overall percentage of women leading colleges and universities in the United States remains disproportionately low at 26%. This ambiguous case study examines whether or not the Higher Education Administration continues to perpetuate gender inequalities through simplistic and, often times, unconscious hiring and mentoring practices scaffolding upon good intentions.


Author(s):  
Jill Harrison ◽  
John Ryan

Technology use is contextual and tends to follow, often invisible, ground rules. Within the situational context of a higher education classroom the rules and sanctions regarding technology use become increasingly complex. Many universities in the United States now require that all incoming students have laptops, with the rationale being that technology is an important tool used to help students organize and catalogue knowledge. Laptops allow students to connect to library and campus resources. Further, requiring laptops on a networked campus creates a sense of digital unity rather than digital divides among students and faculty. The message to students is that personal laptops are important and even required. However, within the context of the higher education classroom, laptop use is often being limited or banned by classroom instructors, a contradiction of the larger university message. As Marcuse (1982) noted, technology is a social process. The diffusion of laptop technology into higher education has altered the modes of producing knowledge and the social relationships organized around that production process. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight how the use of this technology is negotiated between faculty and students and how issues of engagement, the self-production of knowledge, and security influence this negotiation. The authors argue that issues of laptop use in the classroom are rooted in concerns of power, legitimacy, and identity associated with the production of knowledge.


1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Coats

Few scholars would nowadays question the importance of the United States in the world of learning; but the process whereby that nation attained its present eminence still remains obscure. Among the cognoscenti, it is generally acknowledged that American scholarship had come of age by the early 1900s, whereas fifty years earlier there had been only a handful of American scholars and scientists of international repute, and the country's higher education lagged far behind its European counterpart. Yet despite the recent popularity of intellectual history and research in higher education, which has produced a veritable flood of publications touching on various aspects of this theme, the heart of the process—the emergence of the academic profession—is still inadequately documented and imperfectly understood.


Author(s):  
Rebecca S. Natow

Background: As calls for evidence-based policymaking become increasingly common, qualitative research has much to offer the policy community. However, policymakers frequently evidence a preference for quantitative research. By discounting the importance of qualitative research in the policymaking process, resulting policies and their target populations miss out on the benefits that qualitative research uniquely offers.Aims and objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine how qualitative research has been perceived and used in the US government’s rulemaking process for creating higher education regulations.Methods: This qualitative case study included data from semi-structured interviews with 34 policy actors involved in higher education rulemaking, rulemaking documents, and research reports cited in several key higher education regulations.Findings: Many policy actors viewed qualitative research favourably, but qualitative studies have seldom been cited in higher education rulemaking. Several respondents discussed validity concerns and some policymakers’ misunderstandings regarding qualitative methods. Moreover, storytelling can influence policy actors’ perspectives about the content of policies, and qualitative research was viewed as effective at identifying compelling stories. Thus, narratives derived from qualitative research may provide an opportunity for qualitative researchers to have their work considered in policymaking processes.Discussion and conclusion: Qualitative research faces challenges with gaining visibility and influence in the development of regulatory policy. However, this study has shown that qualitative research has the potential to be both useful and persuasive to policymakers. Studies that discuss relevant stories may be particularly compelling.


2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd A. Finkle

This case study examines the background, start up, and growth of one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States, AdRoll. It explores the various strategic factors related to the growth of AdRoll and how these issues must be addressed in order to maintain its level of growth.This case study is especially interesting not only because it focuses on one of the fastest-growing firms in the country, but also because it addresses on an understudied topic within the field of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial growth.


Author(s):  
Sean McCarthy ◽  
Audrey Barnes ◽  
Keith S Holland ◽  
Erica Lewis ◽  
Patrice Ludwig ◽  
...  

This descriptive case study provides a broad overview of JMU X-Labs, an academic maker space (in other words, a teaching lab with fabrication and digital production technologies) that hosts team-taught, project-driven multidisciplinary courses. The JMU X-Labs serves the students and faculty of James Madison University[MSR-m1] , a mid-sized, public, and undergraduate-focused university in the United States. The narrative proceeds from two different but overlapping points of view: how courses at JMU X-Labs are designed and taught; and how administration of JMU X-Labs supports them. The authors refer to specific courses, pedagogical methods, and problem-solving strategies to illustrate the narrative, and they argue throughout that pedagogy and administration are indelibly intertwined in how the organization operates. Gesturing to the broad applicability and transferability of the JMU X-Labs model, the authors mark some of areas of further research that would benefit a more robust understanding of how the organization operates and grows. Finally, the authors speculate how the dynamics of this young and growing organization may answer some core and difficult questions pertaining to innovation in higher education.[MSR-m1]James Madison University (JMU) Clearlyl referenced in abstract and opening paragraph below to explain institutional context as per reviewer request. 


Author(s):  
Michael S. Hoffman

In the past decade, enrollments in distance education, and specifically online education, have grown dramatically in the United States. According to the 2009 Sloan Report (), enrollments in online courses increased from 9.6% of total postsecondary enrollments in 2002 to 25.3% in 2009. Unfortunately, a number of barriers exist that may result in an inability of higher education institutions to provide quality online education programming in sufficient scale to meet the expected student demand. The Managing Online Education report () identifies the resistance of faculty towards teaching in an online environment as foremost among ten factors that “impede institutional efforts to expand online education programs” (p. 1). An understanding of the factors that both motivate and discourage faculty member participation in online education programs is critical if institutions are to leverage their existing faculty to meet the current and future demand for online education. This case study first presents a number of motivating and inhibiting factors and then discusses how St. Bonaventure University leveraged these factors in an attempt to boost faculty participation in online education.


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