Curating knowledge, creating change:: University Knowledge Center, Kosovo national transition

Abstract

A collaborative system design initiative at the University for Business and Technology in Kosovo aims to make local knowledge visible and to enhance local knowledge creation, within the university and throughout the country. Since its inception in 2015, design activities aimed to activate systems through modeling the global knowledge landscape, technology enabled systems, and human activity processes. Within the framework of Informed Systems, application of Informed Learning Theory and Information Experience Design (IXD) guided prototyping systems that informed building an institutional repository named the UBT Knowledge Center. The knowledge vision anticipates that sustained curation, organization, discovery, access, and usage processes will accelerate academic engagement, national development, and global visibility, over time and with practice to further theory-to-practice and practice-to-theory.

Coordinated SSM: An Adaptation of the SSM Learning Cycle

“…In addition, similar approaches have been applied in international education and research projects, which further illustrated the benefit of coordinating SSM with additional bodies of knowledge [22][23][24][25].…”

Co-designing an Institutional Repository in Kosovo

“…The course, taught by an international cohort of faculty from Sweden, the United States, and Kosovo, was titled, "Analysis, Design and Modeling in Information Systems", and had a focus on Peter Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) (Checkland, 1981). During the course, the primary project was to identify and develop plans for an institutional repository, the UBT Knowledge Center (https://knowledgecenter.ubt-uni.net/) (Somerville et al, 2020;Gibney, 2019;Gibney et al, 2018). Student feedback from the 2018 course was taken into account during the implementation process in early 2019 when the IR was launched.…”

Creating collaborative capacity in early career research writers

“…The previous Framework identified three levels of collaborative research culture: trust and respect (Roots), shared interest groups (Fields), and inspiration, innovation and inclusion (Fruits) (Gasson & Bruce 2018). An examination of the role of the creative writer (Lynch, McGowan & Hancox 2017), the role of the researcher in collaboration (Rajalo & Vadi 2017) and researchers' information experiences (Bruce 2008;Maybee 2018;Somerville et al 2019) led to the recognition that Collaborative Capacity should be included as an additional component of a revised Framework (Gasson & Bruce 2020). Through a comparison of the features of the creative writer and the role of the individual in collaboration, Collaborative Capacity was defined as being comprised of two elements: leadership (Browning, Thompson & Dawson 2017;Kok 2017;Torfing 2019) and Informed Research, which draws together a suite of information experiences for research, research collaboration and research writing (Bruce 2008).…”

“…We present five stories through the paper of the collaborative research writer operating across these layers using their Collaborative Capacity to illustrate its application. Collaborative Capacity is intended to articulate the significance of individual roles that engage information and encourage collaborative success (Rajalo & Vadi 2017), the key role of leadership in research, research management and research collaboration (Browning et al 2017;Johnson 2012;Kok 2017;Lase & Hartijasti 2018) and the importance of information experiences for successful research, collaboration and writing (Bruce 1997(Bruce , 2008Maybee 2018;Somerville et al 2019).…”

“…Discussions about informed learning design (Maybee 2018) and the informed learner (Bruce 2008) led us to reframe the seven faces of information literacy (Bruce 1997) to meet the needs of the collaborative research writer. We constructed the concept of informed research to engage with information systems (Somerville et al 2019), research professionals and research stakeholders (Browning et al 2017;Kok 2017). Systems, professionals and stakeholders contribute to the richness of research and writing processes by focusing on access and engagement with information, data, training and equipment.…”