Introduction: An Overview of the Research

The ambition for this book is to demonstrate how higher education institutions (HEIs) can respond to societal challenges, support positive social change and influence the international public discourse on social innovation. It attempts to answer the question, ‘how does the present higher education system, in different countries, promote social innovation and create social change and impact’. In answering this question, the book identifies factors driving success as well as obstacles. The book offers suggestions about how the present system can be improved both based on existing data and international literature on social innovation in higher education. The book presents a selected set of peer reviewed chapters presenting different perspectives against which relevant actors can identify and analyse social innovation in HEIs.

Back to what? What STEM and Health teaching academics learnt from COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about an era of innovation in higher education that was extraordinary both in its scale and suddenness. Our study, carried out in STEM and Health disciplines of a multicampus Victorian university, asked the teaching academics in the eye of this storm to reflect on what they had learnt from this experience. In particular, we asked what had worked, what had not worked, what they planned to retain in their teaching post-COVID-19, and what they would be relieved to discard. Above all, we found the experience of COVID-19 learning and teaching to be highly variegated. Academics reported some online activities which were predominantly successful, others which were predominantly unsuccessful, and still others for which the experience was quite different, depending on the context. Our data suggest that future learning and teaching policy should allow for discipline and cohort nuances and cannot be one-size-fits-all.

Innovation in Higher Education Management and Leadership

Innovation in higher education management and leadership has experienced a continuous increase in demand, worldwide. The emergence of global events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, has accelerated the adoption and implementation of this innovation. Furthermore, technological advancement can be attributed to changes in educational management and leadership. The use of business models, theories, and methods such as the Education Management Information System (EMIS) has improved the collection, analysis, interpretation, storage, and retrieval of data to increase how they make well-informed decisions. Therefore, the strategies employed in higher education management and leadership have undergone many changes and updates. However, further research is required to ensure that best practices, evidence, and data-driven methods are used to improve staff/follower satisfaction and high performance of students and teachers in higher education institutions. This study explores the impact of innovation on management and leadership in higher education institutions. Findings from several countries show a strong positive correlation between increase in innovation and better educational management and leadership. Additionally, openness to change and happiness of stakeholders in higher education institutions increases when leaders and educational management are trained through conferences and benchmarking activities. Hence, using emerging technology and openness to change through education, awareness creation, and training, the level of innovation in universities and other higher education institutions increases, which in turn promotes performance and productivity. Received: 11 August 2021 / Accepted: 3 October 2021 / Published: 5 November 2021

Open innovation factors for higher education institutions

Open innovation is a fundamental strategy in all institutions of higher education which allows them to achieve the goals and mission objectives, having as one of its essential purposes the generation and transfer of knowledge which is sup-ported and achieved by research groups and seedbeds generating innovation and development products of great impact, however, are not always incorporated to meet any requirement or provide solutions in society or in the productive sector among others. The article presents factors of open innovation, which must be analyzed, developed or strengthened within the institutions, therefore, while innovation has an important role, the application and adaptation requires disci-pline and integration with the organizational culture. The article identifies and describes the various components needed to incorporate open innovation in higher education institutions

Developing soft Skills through Active Learning: Storytelling Concrete Experiences through a MOOC

The eLene4Life project aims to support curriculum innovation in higher education (HE) through the development of active learning approaches for transversal skills, with the ultimate aim of improving students’ employability. The MOOC “Active Learning for Soft Skills Development”, one of the project outputs, has been put in place as a space for learning through experience sharing and discussion. The MOOC aims at fostering the exchange of results achieved by instructors after the concrete experimentation of active learning methods and at increasing their sensibility and knowledge of the most effective modalities through which to implement those methods. This paper outlines the genesis of the MOOC. Its three main objectives are: (a) collecting and valorising different voices of the teachers who directly experimented one or more methodologies of active learning in their classroom (most of them during the pandemic); (b) embracing and sustaining experiences, as well as addressing doubts coming from a wider audience interested in putting into practice such methods oriented to soft and digital skills’ development; (c) offering a non-formal learning opportunity in line with European indications about micro-credentialing through developing synergies with the ECCOE project (European Credit Clearinghouse for Opening up Education).

Quality assurance systems: enemies or allies of innovation in higher education institutions?

Purpose This study aims to examine the extant literature to analyze the relationship between quality assurance (QA) and innovation in the higher education context. Design/methodology/approach This study selected 63 articles through a systematic literature review in Scopus and Web of Science databases and performed a descriptive and thematic synthesis-analysis on the sample. Findings The research identifies several perspectives discussed on QA systems covering experiences, criticisms and practice implications. The literature review shows there is no clear consensus on whether innovation in higher education institutions (HEIs) is fostered or hindered by QA processes. However, it seems that the likelihood of innovativeness and positive QA outcomes are directly linked to how these processes are managed in universities. Research limitations/implications This review highlights the university management concerns that emerge with QA issues as it is not yet clear to what extent innovation is actually promoted in scenarios where QA is applied. Hence, this literature review could be considered comprehensive but not exhaustive. Further studies are recommended to improve the understanding of how HEIs can both innovate and ensure quality at the same time. Originality/value The paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge by advancing the opportunities and challenges that HEIs face due to QA system features.

Completing the CiCLE: long-term assessment of community-involved collaborative learning ecosystems for social innovation in higher education

Purpose The purpose of this study is to highlight the benefits and challenges of immersive, design thinking and community-engaged pedagogies for supporting social innovation within higher education; assess the impact of such approaches across stakeholder groups through long-term retrospective analysis of transdisciplinary and cross-stakeholder work; offer an approach to ecosystems design and analysis that accounts for complex system dynamics in higher education partnerships. Design/methodology/approach This study uses constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz and Belgrave, 2012) to create a long-term systemic analysis of university innovation efforts. Researchers analysed 37 semi-structured interviews across key stakeholders involved in the design and implementation of the Design Thinking Studio in Social Innovation. Interview subjects include alumni (students), faculty, community partners and administrators. Interviews were coded using constant comparative coding (Mills et al., 2006) to develop and analyse themes. This study includes situated perspectives from the authors who offer their subjective relationship to the Studio’s development. Findings This paper assesses the outcomes and design of a transdisciplinary cross-stakeholder social innovation program and extends prior research on the potential and challenges of design thinking and immersive pedagogies for supporting service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) practices within higher education. Qualitative interview results reveal how time, resources and other structural and systemic factors operate across stakeholder groups. The findings address a gap in SLCE and social innovation literature by situating community learning within pedagogical interventions constructed not only for the benefit of students but for community members. The authors conclude that the research on social innovation in higher education could benefit from a more intentional examination of longitudinal effects of innovative pedagogical environments across a broad range of stakeholder perspectives and contexts. Social implications This paper identifies how innovative higher education programs are forced to navigate structural, epistemological and ethical quandaries when engaging in community-involved work. Sustainable innovation requires such programs to work within institutional structures while simultaneously disrupting entrenched structures, practices, and processes within the system. Originality/value Social innovation in higher education could benefit from harnessing lessons from collective impact and ecosystem design frameworks. In addition, the authors argue higher education institutions should commit to studying longitudinal effects of innovative pedagogical environments across multiple stakeholder perspectives and contexts. This study closes these gaps by advancing an ecosystems model for long-term and longitudinal assessment that captures the impact of such approaches across stakeholder groups and developing an approach to designing and assessing community-involved collaborative learning ecosystems (CiCLE).

Knowledge management to support innovation in higher education institutions

This paper presents and discusses the use of knowledge management to support innovation in higher education institutions (HEI). The study was conducted at Brasil-STHEM Consortium - a network of Brazilian higher education institutions that work together in the implementation of innovation in their teaching and learning practises. 29 HEI participated in the study that was designed as an exploratory research and used the Asian Productivity Association (APO) knowledge management maturity level assessment tool as a framework for data collection and analysis. Results demonstrate that there was openness for knowledge management and that there is technological infrastructure available for this to happen, but found little evidence of the systematic use of knowledge management practices. The study contributes to research and practise in education management by proposing the use of KM theory and tools to understand how knowledge being generated by higher education institutions can be identified, stored, shared, created and applied in order to amplify its impact to educational change and innovation.