Designing Education for Innovation
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Education for innovation is shown to be synergistic with education quality defined broadly. Such education includes both general and specific approaches. The general approach draws on Derek Bok’s core purposes of an undergraduate education: learning to communicate, learning to think, building character, preparation for citizenship, living with diversity, preparing for a global society, acquiring broader interests, and preparing for a career. The specific approach, education about innovation and entrepreneurship, describes the process of innovation and presents role models to motivate students and help immunize them from the fear of failure. Topics include creative destruction, entrepreneurs, the adoption process for innovations, effects on productivity, and change agency. They are relevant to the education of informed citizens as well as training for would-be entrepreneurs
The idea of change agency extends to the challenge of furthering education for innovation in universities. The topics here represent “academic quality work” and “academic audit.” Academic quality work refers to efforts by departments and individual faculty members to set educational goals, map the goals into curricular design, design appropriate teaching and learning methods (including active learning), assess student and teacher performance, and assure quality. Academic audit refers to a methodology for ascertaining the maturity of a department’s academic quality work and encouraging improvement. Examples of how academic quality work and academic audit can be adapted to include factors important in education for innovation are provided. Explicit answers to the five guiding questions that motivate this volume are given in the last section of the chapter.