Abstract:

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are increasingly expected to prepare graduates for rapidly evolving digital economies. However, in many regions, including sub-Saharan Africa, universities often face challenges in aligning curricula, pedagogical approaches, and learning experiences with the demands of emerging digital innovation ecosystems. At the same time, Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) have become important actors in fostering entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and innovation-driven skills. Strengthening collaboration between HEIs and DIHs therefore represents an important opportunity to enhance the relevance of higher education to the digital labour market.

This paper presents the development and structure of the UNIHUBS Training Toolkit for Higher Education Institutions and Digital Innovation Hubs, designed as a capacity-building resource to support educators, innovation professionals, and institutional stakeholders in implementing collaborative, learner-centred and innovation-oriented educational practices. The toolkit was developed within the framework of UNIHUBS, an Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education initiative (project number: 101128313).

The development of the toolkit was informed by a needs analysis conducted across partner countries in Africa, which explored existing skills gaps, collaboration barriers, and training needs within digital innovation ecosystems. The needs analysis involved sixty-nine (69) participants from HEIs and DIHs from Ghana, Tanzania & Kenya. These participants engaged in eight (8) focus group discussions designed to capture diverse perspectives on the challenges and opportunities within digital innovation ecosystems. The findings highlighted the need for stronger integration of digital competences, entrepreneurial thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experiential learning approaches within higher education.

The UNIHUBS Training Toolkit is organised around five thematic modules that address key areas relevant to innovation-oriented higher education: digital pedagogy capacity, entrepreneurship integration, co-creation methodologies, digital and soft skills development, and impact of teaching innovation. Each module provides a structured set of resources, including learning outcomes, conceptual foundations, recommended learning materials, interactive activities, and facilitation guidance. The toolkit is designed to be adaptable to diverse institutional contexts and to support both formal teaching environments and professional development initiatives for educators and innovation practitioners.

A distinctive feature of the toolkit is its emphasis on co-creation and experiential learning. The resources encourage collaboration between universities, innovation hubs, industry stakeholders, and students through design-thinking approaches, challenge-based learning activities, and collaborative problem-solving tasks.

The UNIHUBS Training Toolkit contributes to ongoing discussions on how higher education can respond to digital transformation by offering a practical model for integrating innovation ecosystems into teaching and learning practices. Through this open access toolkit, this paper aims to provide educators, institutional leaders, and policy stakeholders with insights into scalable approaches for strengthening innovation-oriented education and fostering meaningful collaboration between universities and digital innovation hubs.

Keywords:

Higher education innovation, Digital innovation ecosystems, University–industry collaboration, Digital pedagogy, Capacity building in higher education.