VACEK, Jiri, SKALICKY, Jiri & VOSTRACKY, Zdenek
Department of Innovations and Projects, Faculty of Economics, University of West Bohemia, Plzen, vacekj@kip.zcu.cz, http://www.kip.zcu.cz (in Czech)
Abstract: The ever sharper competition and globalisation can be faced only by increasing pace of innovations. The information society imposes a paradigm shift in education and training. People need to be trained and retrained to keep up with the pace of technological and social change. The engineers of tomorrow must be able to solve problems that have not been even formulated during their studies. Traditional education, based mainly on lectures and textbooks supplemented by workshops in disciplines that are only loosely coupled, which is completed when students leave school, cannot prepare them for solving of complex problems in interdisciplinary teams. This paper presents some approaches that are being implemented at the University of West Bohemia.
One of them - the project oriented program (known also as problem based learning - is based on experience of leading world universities and on our own experience with the certificate program PRISMA (Project, Innovation, Strategy, Management). It combines the traditional approach with practical experience - the students actively work in teams solving actual problems, presented by companies participating in the programme. The work in teams in direct contact with tutors from the entrepreneurial and public sector can enrich the education, enhance theoretical knowledge by problem solving techniques. Students are encouraged to use tools supporting creativity, team work, communication, decision making, project management and system thinking. They get better understanding of links between engineering disciplines and business environment, between society, science and technology. And - last but not least - they are led to the necessity of lifelong learning.
Lifelong and distance learning is another challenge for the university. Using the synergy between today’s computing and telecommunication technologies, we can develop tools allowing the university to reach students at the place and at the time most suitable to them, offer them flexible courses adapted to their specific needs at affordable price, enable people to learn what they want, when they want, where they want and how they want.. The UWB started to adapt existing modules of PRISMA to interactive ones. Traditional lectures are being transformed into hypertext enriched by links to interactive tests and examples that will allow the assessment of student’s progress. The system will support the team work through extensive use of e-mail and conferences. It will exploit our three-year experience with PRISMA, where we encouraged the team work supported by e-mail in preparation of term papers.
To successfully implement and fully realize the potential of new programmes and approaches, we must not neglect the preparation of teachers. The successful universities of tomorrow themselves must become learning organisations.
Keywords: education, innovation, management, problem oriented, interactive
The ever sharper competition and globalisation can be faced only by increasing pace of innovations. ”The pace and flexibility of technological change in products and processes seem to be key elements in economic performance”[4]. Country that is able to create the environment supporting innovations is also able to increase the performance and competitiveness of its economy. Education in innovations undoubtedly belongs to components of the country innovation system.
The information society imposes a paradigm shift in education and training. People need to be trained and retrained to keep up with the pace of technological and social change. The engineers of tomorrow must be able to solve problems that have not been even formulated during their studies. Traditional education, based mainly on lectures and textbooks supplemented by workshops in disciplines that are only loosely coupled and which is completed when students leave school, cannot prepare them for the solution of complex problems in interdisciplinary teams.
Frascati Manual [3] defines technological innovation and the role of R&D as follows: “Technological innovations comprise new products and processes and significant technological changes of products and processes. An innovation has been implemented if it has been introduced on the market /product innovation) or used within a production process (process innovation). Innovations therefore involve a series of scientific, technological, organizational, financial and commercial activities.
R&D is only one of these activities and may be carried out at different phases of innovation process, acting not only as the original source of inventive ideas as a form of problem solving which can be called on at any point up to implementation.” We think that this definition can be extended to non-technological innovations, which play very important role in the life of any society. Let us remember such innovations as post, credit system, university, health and social systems, etc. We should not put equal signs between innovation as a whole, technological innovation and high-tech. As there are innovations that are not technological, there are technological innovations that are not high-tech (and high-techs that are not innovative).
The list of activities mentioned in the definition implies, that - except some rare occasions - innovation process involves a wide spectrum of professionals specialized in different fields. To educate today the engineers of tomorrow, the university must give them not only the knowledge in their core disciplines, but also in the art of management and related disciplines.
The Department of Innovations and Projects offers to all students of the University the certificate program PRISMA (Projects, Innovation, Strategy, MAnagement). Its basic modules are:
At present the University of West Bohemia comprises the following seven faculties: Applied Sciences, Economics, Electrical Engineering, Education, Humanities, Law and Mechanical Engineering. Our courses are visited mainly by students of economics and engineering specializations. As their prerequisites and goals differ, our courses must be sufficiently interdisciplinary and must offer something new to students of all specializations.The education of future innovators has been discussed within the working group of the Czech Association of Innovative Entrepreneurship. One of the conclusions is that there are two broad target groups:
Although the linear model does not reflect the dynamics of innovation, it is still used, for its simplicity, in the decision making at the policy level and we think that it is appropriate for the purpose of this paper. Those interested in more realistic and sophisticated models of innovations can found them e.g. in [4].
Requirement on education of these two target groups are - except the general common basis - different.:
Course ”Integrated Innovation Management ” (IMI) is focused on the creators. It gives them basic information about methods that they could further develop in more specialized modules of PRISMA or in other courses. The course is completed by the term paper, which is the joint effort of a group of 3-5 students. Creation of groups from students of various specializations is encouraged. Communication of students among themselves and with the teacher is facilitated by the use of e-mail. The experience from PRISMA is used in design of new curricula and methodology that are described in more detail in the following sections of this paper.
Table 1 illustrates the numbers of IMI students
Table 1: IMI students at the UWB
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| 1996/97 |
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| 1997/98 |
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| 1998/99 |
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| 1996-99 | ||||||
Ever faster innovation process puts significantly higher requirements to the preparation of students. Graduates must be able to solve problems that have not been even formulated during their studies. Traditional forms of teaching and learning, based mainly on lectures from individual disciplines, often without clear link among them, when the complex problem solving is often limited to the final stage of study - diploma work, mostly solved individually, are no more adequate.
Universities cannot teach innovations without innovating themselves. Leading universities in the world respond to the situation by introduction of new type of study, called Problem Based Learning, Problem Oriented Learning or Project Oriented Studies. We selected for this type of study the name Project Oriented Program to stress out the orientation to the project (problem in Czech often indicates trouble) and to the complexity of the program.
This program combines the preparation of students in disciplines with preparation consisting in broad and active participation of students in the solution of actual problems coming from cooperating organizations. Students form the team solving the problem in close contact with the environment in which they will work. The overall picture of the POP is illustrated in Fig. 2.
The goals of POP are:
It is evident that POP is unthinkable without direct contact with external companies. Some issues to be solved in the implementation of POP are listed below:
Education of innovators cannot be limited to traditional regular daily courses. It must be transformed into lifelong learning process. With this goal in mind, we must innovate the forms of teaching/learning. Synergy of existing information and telecommunication technologies puts into our hand strong tools that must be mastered both by students and teachers. These tools allow the university to reach students at the place and at the time most suitable to them, offer them flexible courses adapted to their specific needs at affordable price, enable people to learn what they want, when they want, where they want and how they want..
DIP works on adaptation of PRISMA modules to interactive multimedia courses. Basic materials (lecture notes) will be supplemented by interactive on-line tests, problems and examples. Using them, students will be able to assess their understanding of the material presented to them and the system itself or with the intervention of the teacher will be able to modify the presentation (more detailed explanation to some, more condensed to others, etc.) Modules will be enriched by hypertext links both among themselves and with external supplementing resources.
The assessment system itself presents a difficult task. We must avoid the trap of the old paradigm - schools prefer to teach what is easy to test. It means that methods allowing the evaluation of complex, often not quantifiable questions not allowing the simple yes-no, selection of an alternative or numeric answer, must be studied and implemented.
The system will support the team work through extensive use of e-mail and conferences and other means of communication between students and teachers. Although these forms of study are especially suitable to distance and lifelong education and training, they increase the effectivity of normal education, too. The main drawback today seems to be not the technology, but the limited access of many distance students to Internet, mainly due to relatively high Czech TELECOM fees. We hope this situation will change for better after deregulation of telecommunication services and/or the entry of new providers to the market (cable TV, etc.) The situation of regular students in this respect is much better, because they can use the University intranet free of charge, but even them can only gain by access from their homes.
Some initial steps have been done and Czech participants can view the Departments web pages [5].
The university cannot educate today engineers of tomorrow by delivering to them all the detailed knowledge they may ever need. Even the best teacher cannot foresight what expects his/her students several years (sometimes even weeks) after the graduation. The university can - and must - give its students the understanding of complexity of the world, to give into their hands (and heads) the knowledge of methodology and work with information and - last, but not least - to teach them to learn. This is a challenge, but also a demanding task. It means that not only the students, but also teachers must be much more flexible and adaptive, and may be the teachers will have to be the first who will have to adapt to the new needs. The successful universities of tomorrow must become learning organisations.
In the very end, we would like to mention another challenge (and opportunity) to Czech participants. The 5-th Framework Program of EU RTD is opened to the Czech Republic as an associated country and opens the possibility of free competition of the country R&D with their more developed counterparts. The role of this program is not only in its potential funding, but also in giving us the opportunity of objective comparison with our competitors and would-be partners. The UWB as a regional information center offers information on the 5-th FP on its web pages [5] and is prepared to assist interested parties from the region in identification of opportunities and development of proposals.
Fig. 1 - Linear model of innovation
Fig. 2 - Project Oriented Program - POP
