Blended system thinking approach to strengthen the education and training in university-industry research collaboration

ABSTRACT

University-industry research collaboration (UIRC) is a major source for research and innovations and economic growth. Despite the extensive evidence on the importance of such collaboration in developed and developing countries, the literature related to strengthen such collaboration along with its innovation performance is still scarce. Scholars believed that the impact of education and training on researchers have a vigorous influence on research and innovations. Moreover, to enhance the competencies of education and training on researchers, it is mandatory to refurbish education and skills system in conjunction with technological infrastructure system along with their reinforcing factors i.e. knowledge sharing and research and development cooperation, respectively. In this paper, we evaluate the influence of education and skills and technological infrastructure system along with their corresponding reinforcing factors in the blended system thinking method to strengthen education and training. Evidence from UIRC in Malaysia provides empirical corroboration that the role of education and skills system and technological infrastructure system along with their reinforcing factors have a positive influence on education and training. Thus, the findings of this research suggest that intensifying the quality of education and skills system and technological infrastructure system with the reinforcing effect can enhance the effectiveness of education and training.

KEYWORDS:

• University-industry research collaboration
• education and skills system
• system thinking
• national innovation system

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abeda Muhammad Iqbal

Abeda Muhammad Iqbal (Member of the Malaysian branch of the Royal Asiatic Society) is currently research fellow at Institute of Social Informatics & Technological Innovation, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. She received her PhD and Master’s degree in Management from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru in 2018 and 2012 respectively, and her bachelor in Commerce from University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan in 2005. Her research interest includes Technology Management, Innovation and Policy Management, Human Resource Management, Entrepreneurship, University-Industry Research Linkages, Organizational behavior.

Adnan Shahid Khan

Adnan Shahid Khan (Senior Member, IEEE) is currently a Senior Lecturer at Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. He has completed his Postdoctoral, PhD and Masters in Networks and Information Security in 2013, 2012, 2008 respectively from Universiti Technology Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia and BSc (Hons) Computer Sciences in 2005 from University of Punjab, Lahore Pakistan. His research interest includes Security issues in Wireless Communication, Cloud computing, Internet of things, Software Defined Networking, Cryptography, Network and Information Security.

Johari Abdullah

Associate Professor Dr. Johari Abdullah is currently serving at the Faculty of Computer Science & IT, UNIMAS, Sarawak. He received his PhD (Computing Science) from Newcastle University (UK), his Master of IT from Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, and Bachelor of Computer Science (Networking) degree from Universiti Putra Malaysia. His interest in ICT is wide and ranging from Trusted System, Blockchain Technology, Web System Design and development, System Architecture, problem solving using tools such as TRIZ, ICT education for children and youth through Computational Thinking, Scratch and Computer Science Unplugged, and open source system and software.

Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer

Professor Dr. Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer has served 24 years of his almost three decades in academia as one of the pioneer staff of Faculty of Computer Science and IT in UNIMAS. He is currently the Director of the Institute of Social Informatics and Technological Innovations (ISITI) and Professor of Computer Science at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). He received his PhD in Computer Science from Graz University of Technology, Austria. He has completed supervision of 6 PhD and 14 Masters candidates. He has taught over 20 courses at the Undergraduate and Masters level. In terms of research, he has published around 120 peer-reviewed papers on technology-based learning, data analytics and on making eLearning work in an information proliferation era. He has a H-Index of 12, according to Google Scholar. He has pioneered efforts in eLearning from heading the Virtual Campus Programme, Centre of Applied Learning and Multimedia, and initiating UNIMAS' first ever MOOC initiative on IT literacy. He is continuing to impact changes at the national and international levels through his work with remote rural communities across the country, strategy shaping Taskforce on ICT education, promoting MOOC and currently innovating MOOC technology to serve marginalized rural communities in Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. He has been instrumental in the Virtual Campus project and online learning efforts in UNIMAS and has produced blueprints for eLearning for UNIMAS in 2001. At the national level he had also been a member of the National IT Council’s (NITC) Strategic Taskforce on eLearning from 2000 to 2001. Furthermore he has obtained registered Intellectual Property and the National and International awards for his role in projects such as eBario project and the e-Toro Indigenous Knowledge Management system, Semantic Clustering Toolkit and the e-Co Outcome-based profiling system.

Aslan Amat Senin

Aslan Amat Senin is Associate Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at AHIBS. He holds Bachelor in Economics (Hitotsubashi University, Monbusho scholar), MSc in Technology Management (UMIST) and PhD in Science Policy Research (Manchester). Before joining UTM in 2000, he has worked for several years as quality and safety management system auditor. His research and teachings are therefore wide-ranging; within or intersections between innovation studies; science, technology and innovation policy research; technology and innovation management; university-industry links; and operation management. Apart from these professional interests, Aslan has also soft spot for history and sociology literature. He is currently editor-in-chief for Jurnal Kemanusiaan (Journal of Humanities) and editor for Sains Humanika (UTM flagship Journal for Social Sciences).