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

Abstract

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).

Best Social Entrepreneurship Teaching and Learning Strategies for Promoting Students' Social Entrepreneurial Minds: A Scoping Review

“…http://ijlter.org/index.php/ijlter The selected publication was published within a fifteen-year time frame and included, inter alia, conceptual papers, mixed-method research designs, and quantitative and qualitative empirical studies. Twenty-six (26) studies that met the selection criteria, were taken into consideration including seven quantitative studies (Portuguez Castro & Gómez Zermeño, 2021;Cunha et al, 2021;Vázquez-Parra et al, 2021;Santos et al, 2021;Yasin & Khansari, 2021;Othman & Ab Wahid, 2014;Kirby & Ibrahim, 2011); eleven qualitative studies (Belcher et al, 2022;Lake et al, 2022;Krstikj, 2021;Day et al, 2021;Zermeño & de la Garza, 2020;Vealey & Gerding, 2016;Wiley & Berry, 2015;Rivers et al, 2014;Huq & Gilbert, 2013;Elmes et al, 2012& Gunn et. al, 2008, seven concept papers (Brown & Crawford, 2022;Yu & Duchin, 2022;Adomßent et al, 2019;Maxwell & Armellini, 2018;Penin et al, 2015;Chang et al, 2014;Rae, 2010) 2011); Germany (n=1) (Adomßent et al, 2019); Australia (n=1) (Huq & Gilbert, 2013); Africa (n=1) (Elmes et al, 2012); India (n=1) (Satar & Natasha, 2019), and the state of Columbia, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria (n=1) (Belcher et al, 2022).…”

“…Works on the literature reviewed found several best teaching and learning strategies that could foster students' entrepreneurial minds such as the Top-Down and Bottom Up Approach (Yu & Duchin, 2022;Vázquez-Parraet al, 2022;Adomßent et al, 2019;Satar & Natasha, 2019), Experiential Learning (Belcher et al, 2022;Cunha et al, 2022;Yunfeng et al, 2022;Awaysheh & Bonfiglio, 2017;Othman & Ab Wahid, 2014), Action Learning (Brown & Crawford, 2022;Day et al, 2021;Santos et. al., 2021;Yasin & Khansari, 2021), Community-Based Project (Lake et al, 2022), Problem-Based Learning (Krstikj, 2021), Work-Based Learning (Maxwell & Armellini, 2019;Huq & Gilbert, 2013), and many more. Therefore, this empirical paper aims to discuss the best strategy for promoting students' social entrepreneurial minds and produce an extensive map of themes for future research.…”

“…These projects involve working with local communities to identify social problems, develop solutions, and implement impactful projects. By working on community-based projects, students can learn how to engage with diverse stakeholders, build relationships, and develop strategies to address more complex social issues (Lake et al, 2022). These experiences can aid them in gaining the ability to think critically, solve problems, and take on leadership roles that are essential for social entrepreneurship.…”

“…, and one mixedmethods research(Satar & Natasha, 2019). The majority of the study was carried out in the United States (n=9)(Yu & Duchin, 2022;Lake, et al, 2022;Brown & Crawford, 2022; Vázquez-Parra et al, 2021;Santos et al, 2021; Days et al, 2021;Vealey & Gerding, 2016;Wiley & Berry, 2015;Penin et al, 2015), followed by United Kingdom (n=5)(Maxwell & Armellini, 2018;Rivers et al, 2014;Chang et al, 2014;Rae 2010;Gunn et al ,2008), Mexico (n=3)(Portuguez Castro & Gómez Zermeño, 2021; Krstikj, 2021; Zermeño & de la Garza, 2020), Portugal (n=1)(Cunha et al, 2021), United Arab Emirates (UAE) (n=1)(Yasin & Khansari, 2021), Malaysia (n=1)(Othman & Ab Wahid, 2014), Egypt (n=1)(Kirby & Ibrahim, …”

Management framework for higher education institution-based community innovation labs

“…The perceived success of this type of organization, especially when tackling local level social issues, has prompted academia to pay more attention in recent publications to the measurement of the social impact of such organizations, and the modelling of key aspects related to guiding principles, structure and management models (Cole, 2022). This has been a sign of increasing involvement of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in developing and refining the activity of innovation labs, particularly community innovation labs (CILs), an aspect distinctly encouraged by some authors as HEIs are perceived as an integral part of community eco-systems (Lake et al, 2022). In this regard, we can already see examples of HEIs choosing to increase social innovation activity through creating social innovation structures within their own institutions with the specific purpose of then developing community partnerships (Panitch et al, 2021).…”