Higher Education – Taught

ƒ Undergraduate “third level” education (primarily Higher Bachelors Degrees, Ordinary Bachelors Degrees and Higher Certificates); and

ƒ Those parts of postgraduate “fourth level” education (primarily taught masters degrees and postgraduate diplomas) that are taught in format.

Taught Courses in General

There is considerable variation in the extent to which higher education taught courses in Ireland develop creativity and capability to engage in innovation among their students. This issue is not specific to particular institutions or to particular disciplines.

While there can be a place for specific courses focused on topics such as creativity and communication skills, the primary need is for development of skills relating to creativity and innovation to be embedded into the learning approaches used for the main content of the course of study. There is a discussion of the ways in which this can be achieved within the body of the report.

Key approaches include (inter alia):

ƒ Greater use of team-based project work;

ƒ Problem-based learning and inquiry-based learning; and

ƒ Flexibility for students to take some courses outside the main discipline they are studying. The first three of these approaches rely on small group teaching.

There is room within these approaches for more cross-disciplinary work between disciplines within broad groups, such as within science, or within humanities. However, the greatest need is for projects that cross very different disciplines that complement each other in the workplace, such as, for example:

ƒ Business and science;

ƒ Engineering and business; or

ƒ Computing and design.

Taught Courses in Creative Disciplines

Many higher education courses in design and other creative disciplines have not gone through any thorough process of re-evaluation in recent years. This report has identified a number of areas outside the traditional mainstream of such courses that are becoming increasingly relevant when creatives enter employment or start up in business on their own behalf.

The responsible higher education institutions should review courses in design and other creative disciplines to identify whether they should modify them so as to better prepare students to form an effective part of an innovating team, or to develop business skills to complement their creative skills. They should consult with relevant professional and industry bodies on course design. They should source expertise in business learning appropriate to their students’ needs, whether from business academics in the same (or a related) institution, from providers of start-your-own business courses, or indeed in some cases from their own resources.

Design in Business Education and Training

While user-centred approaches to innovation are recognised as important in the business literature, and while design is the discipline with most to say on this topic, there are few cases where business courses include substantial design content. Some design content (particularly product design) would fit logically into courses in business strategy, marketing, business information systems and technology management, as well as into general business studies courses.

Higher education institutions providing courses in business should teach the design thinking

perspective, and should include design modules in courses in business strategy, marketing, business information systems and technology management.

4.5 Higher Education by Research

This section addresses postgraduate “fourth level” education pursued through research (primarily research masters degrees and PhDs).

Research Degrees in SET Disciplines

The initiatives taken by the higher education system to add professional development courses and modules to PhD research programmes are very positive from a creativity and innovation perspective.

There is a need to go further, to tackle a disconnect that exists between science, engineering and technology (SET) disciplines at graduate research level on the one hand, and business on the other, in order to develop the mutual empathy and understanding between business graduates and research SET graduates that is required if Irish research is to become more successful at spinning out start-up businesses.

Higher education institutions should continue to develop and operate professional education modules for their PhD students, and research funding bodies should continue to support student participation in these programmes. The State should continue to support innovation in the area through the Higher Education Authority’s Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), through future rounds of the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI), and through any further rounds of the Graduate

Research Education Programme (GREP).

Schools of management, and of art and design, should upgrade the priority that they place on research, with a view to making a greater number of successful submissions for funding. As research develops in design and the creative arts, it will be important that research students in these

disciplines engage also with business disciplines.

The Departments of Education and Science and of Arts, Sports and Tourism should explore viable ways to fund creative arts research.

Consistent with the fact that it is one of a number of funding agencies active in SET research, Enterprise Ireland should look at the possibility of also becoming one of the agencies regularly funding research into management practice, as a means of encouraging business schools to focus on research applicable to business creativity and innovation, and more generally on ways to improve Irish management practice.