Report on: the international APIKS workshop ‘Engagement, External Activities/Knowledge/Technology Transfer’

Dates: August 25-27, 2019

Venue: the University of Kassel, Germany

Report contributed by: Professor Futao Huang

The International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) of University of Kassel, Germany organized the international workshop, entitled ‘Engagement, External Activities, Knowledge, Technology Transfer’, as part of the Academic Profession in the Knowledge Society (APIKS) from August 25-27, 2019 at the University of Kassel.  This has been the follow-up workshop concerning the APIKS project that was held on March 4-5, 2019 in Hiroshima.

At the conference, 41 participants from 19 countries made presentations and exchanged their thoughts about the recent research findings from national surveys with a common questionnaire, as well as future plans. These countries include: Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden, the United States, Turkey, Taiwan. In addition, Professor Tsukasa Daizen, Professor Futao Huang, and Lecturer Yangson Kim from the RIHE participated in the workshop on behalf Japan’s research team.

Main activities of the three-day workshop include:

1. Discussing analytical framework for comparative analysis: Get every country team on the same level of information. Methodological definition of cases of countries and/or higher education institutions for comparison.
2. Creating manuscript working groups: Clarify preferences for comparative analysis of country teams present in Kassel.
3. Developing manuscript working groups: Get a common understanding of national and / or institutional differences, etc.; develop research questions and / or hypotheses; agree on a statistical methodology; agree on a theoretical / conceptual approach; and sketch an “extended abstract” for a manuscript. These would provide a basis on which a special issue of Academics’ Societal Engagement for international indexed journals.
4. Making presentations of “extended abstracts” of manuscript working groups: about 10 minutes for presentation of the outcomes of each manuscript working group.
5. Reflecting on “extended abstracts” of manuscript working groups and planning of publication: Take a step back and jointly reflect what the manuscript working groups have presented, share ideas, etc.

The next international workshop is scheduled in Lithuania in mid-2020. The title will focus on discussing academics’ governance and management.