Abstract:

Higher education with strong links to research, development and innovation (RDI) activities is seen as important both for individuals' skills and for the development of society as whole. Higher education aims to develop both the human capital and the excellence needed to create new jobs, economic growth and prosperity in the EU. The recent literature on innovation research emphasises service innovations that arise from the combination of different knowledge, skills, ideas and resources. Thus, it is important to create open and networked innovation ecosystems where higher education institutes, citizens, private and public sector innovate together. All this requires new collaborative innovation models outside the traditional service research areas.

This article describes the development work on higher education pedagogy at Laurea University of Applied Sciences, which aims to reform and develop approaches that link the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) level 7 higher education more closely with RDI activities, as well as strengthen the role of UAS as facilitators of co-creation and shared knowledge-creation processes in open innovation ecosystems. The starting point for the development work was Laurea's pedagogical approach, Learning by developing (LbD), which was operationalized with the conceptual tools and models provided by Hakkarainen’s and Paavola's (2009) trialogical learning framework. The three metaphors of learning (monological, dialogical and trialogical) provide a valuable framework for evaluating pedagogical solutions. We argue that higher education pedagogy (EQF7) should consist of pedagogical solutions based on the different metaphors of learning that should already be considered during the planning phase of the study units.

The research strategy chosen for this study was action research. The action research consisted of three cycles to examine and develop approaches to link EQF7-level UAS education more closely with research and innovation. The main contribution of this paper is a pedagogical model that is highly suited to integrating the three tasks of universities of applied sciences – education, R&D and regional development. The results indicate that higher education institutes have a significant role in the public innovation ecosystem as drivers of national competitiveness. In addition to their educational mission, higher education institutes promote regional development by maintaining networks and orchestrating innovation activities in the ecosystem.

Keywords:

Higher education, higher education pedagogy, knowledge-creation process, trialogical learning.