This open access book offers unique and novel views on the social innovation landscape, tools, practices, pedagogies, and research in the context of higher education. International, multi-disciplinary academics and industry leaders present new developments, research evidence, and practice expertise on social innovation in higher education institutions (HEIs), across academic and professional disciplines. The book includes a selected set of peer-reviewed chapters presenting different perspectives against which relevant actors can identify and analyse social innovation in HEIs. The volume demonstrates how HEIs can respond to societal challenges, support positive social change, and contribute to the development of international public policy discourse. It answers the question ‘how does the present higher education system, in different countries, promote social innovation and create social change and impact’. In answering this question, the book identifies factors driving success as well as obstacles. Furthermore, it examines how higher education innovation assists societal challenges and investigates the benefits of effective social innovation engagement by HEIs. The interdisciplinary approach of the volume makes it a must-read for scholars, students, policy-makers, and practitioners of economics, education, business and management, political science, and sociology interested in a better understanding of social innovation.

This book offers a much-needed appraisal of two key social change movements within higher education: civic engagement and social innovation. The authors critically explore the historical and contemporary contexts as well as democratic foundations (or absence thereof) of both approaches, concluding with a discussion of possible future directions that may make the approaches more effective in fulfilling the broader democratic mission of U.S. higher education. This is an essential resource for those in higher education who wish to promote and advance social change, as it provides an opportunity to critically examine where we are with our civic engagement and social innovation approaches and what we might do to best realize their promise through changes in our educational processes, pedagogical strategies, evaluation metrics, and outcomes.

Innovation in higher education is a process of institutional adaptation to changes in the environment that enables higher education institutions to improve their existing practice and to be innovative at different levels and in different forms. Moreover, innovativeness is also related to internal characteristics of higher education institutions. Innovation in higher education can be observed as a result of the changing contexts in which higher education institutions function. Adjacently, a comprehensive approach to considering innovativeness is needed in order to enable the examination of different elements of innovativeness in higher education, that is, to identify the key factors that (de)stimulate innovations and affect their interactions with other relevant stakeholders at the national level and beyond. The Handbook of Research on Enhancing Innovation in Higher Education Institutions is a critical scholarly book that examines innovativeness in higher education and its complications and diversity. Starting from the view that higher education is currently confronted by global forces that require new research ideas, the publication suggests that comprehensive understanding of innovativeness is imperative for higher education’s institutions in the 21st century. Analyzing the recognized trends within the publication and concluding which aspects should be taken to improve innovativeness in higher education, this reference book outlines quality and innovation in teaching, innovative university-business cooperation, institutional framework and governance of higher education institutions, knowledge management, and leadership and organizational culture. It is ideal for curriculum designers, administrators, researchers, policymakers, academicians, professionals, and students.

Education badly needs effective innovations that can help produce high-quality learning outcomes across the system. The primary focus of educational innovations should be on teaching and learning theory and practice, as well as on the learner, parent, community, society, and culture. Technology applications need a solid theoretical foundation based on purposeful, systemic research, and a sound pedagogy. Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Innovation in Higher Education is an essential scholarly publication that outlines the classification of innovations, discusses the hurdles to innovation, and offers ways to increase the scale and rate of innovation-based transformations in the education system. The publication argues that raising the quality and scale of innovations in education will positively affect education itself and benefit society. Highlighting topics such as academic integrity, e-learning, and learner engagement, this book is vital for higher education professionals, academicians, educators, librarians, course designers, researchers, and students.

In order to understand the relationship between social innovation and the reimagining of the knowledge economy necessary to reorient higher education most fully towards the public good, we must draw from the experiences of those working on the front lines of change. This collection represents diverse voices and disciplines, drawing together the critical reflections of academics, students and community partners from across South Africa. The book seeks to bring together theoretical and practical lessons about how research methods can be used in socially innovative ways to challenge the ‘apartheids’ of knowledge in higher education and to promote the democratization of the knowledge economy.

Ultimately, the authors make a compelling case not only for this turn to learning but for creating new pathways for nonfaculty learning careers, understanding the limits of professional organizations and social media, and the need to establish this new interdisciplinary field of learning innovation.

Higher education today faces several challenges including soaring cost, rising student debt, declining state support, and a staggering dropout rate. Digital technology enables numerous paths to innovation and promising solutions to these crises in higher education. However, few efforts have been made to look into the dynamic relationship between technology, innovation, and leadership and how they work together to transform teaching and learning, campus life, student service and support, administration, and university advancement. Technology Leadership for Innovation in Higher Education is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the intersection of technology, innovation, and leadership in higher education by examining the role of technology in activating, promoting, and accelerating innovation and by identifying challenges regarding technology leadership. While highlighting topics such as blended teaching, faculty development, and university advancement, this publication is ideally designed for teachers, principals, educational and IT management and staff, researchers, students, and stakeholders in higher education seeking current research on critical leadership dimensions required for effective education leaders.

The worldwide marketization of higher education has resulted in a growing pressure on universities’ accountability, particularly in terms of more tangible learning outcomes directly related to paying higher tuition fees. Covering globally diverse perspectives, Innovate Higher Education to Enhance Graduate Employability uses a range of international case studies to help practitioners and researchers review, reflect on and refresh their ability to bridge the gap between university and industry. A timely response to the need to improve the quality of higher education in order to build work readiness in students, this book: Adds a critical, global dimension to this topical area in higher education as well as society’s concerns Provides a number of practice-based case studies on how universities can transform their programmes to enhance graduate employability Acts as a source of practical suggestions for how to improve students' sufficient employability including their skills, knowledge and attitudes Provides insights from theory, practices and policy perspectives. A crucial read for anyone looking to engage with the global issue of graduate employability, Innovate Higher Education to Enhance Graduate Employability covers both theoretical frameworks and practical models through an exploration of how universities around the world are using innovative techniques to enhance employability.

Contemporary social issues, such as poverty, inequality, and climate change, exceed the capacity of a single sector to solve and require the collaboration of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. In this context, universities play a unique and increasingly comprehensive role in educating students, generating new knowledge, and advancing the social and economic conditions in their communities. Over the past decade, explosive growth has occurred in social entrepreneurship and social innovation initiatives on university and college campuses. Whether offered through a center, initiative, or program, a groundswell of curricular, co-curricular, and convening activities has emerged that educates and engages students, faculty, and a range of stakeholders in the pursuit of solving pressing social issues in innovative ways. Using qualitative research methodology and a grounded theory approach, the purpose of this study was to explore the broad phenomenon of and the proliferation of university-based social impact centers in the United States. Through the perspectives and lived experiences of 43 social impact leaders, from multiple higher education institutions, this study developed a grounded theory model which explains the forces driving the emergence and evolution of the university-based social impact centers. The phenomenon can be explained by these "windows of opportunity" where internal, external, and cultural forces intersect, interact, and overlap with one another, within institutional-specific contexts, to produce new centers. While each institution boasts a unique culture and contextual characteristics, the data demonstrated that mission-driven students, market pressures on higher education institutions, and donor support were the most significant forces driving the expansion of social innovation on college campuses. Akin to the double-bottom line, it was both mission and markets that catalyzed the university-based social impact phenomenon. While the social impact phenomenon initially evolved out of elite graduate business schools, it has expanded cross-campus into public policy schools and central administrative units, and across all institutional types. Social impact education now expands across and down the curriculum and co-curriculum. Some universities now even have multiple social impact initiatives within their own institutions. Participants described the need to differentiate themselves and to compete for resources, students, and attention given the plethora of existing civic and socially-oriented programs on their campuses. This study filled a distinct gap in the literature by studying university-based social impact centers, framed in the broader historical context of the evolutionary role of university engagement in their communities, coupled with the recognition of the realities of contemporary market pressures on higher education institutions. Social impact centers exhibit the intersectionality of a host of issues plaguing higher education, such as resource constraints, access, academic silos, specialization, and bureaucracy versus innovation. Finally, social impact centers are a microcosm of the tension that exists between the marketization of higher education and the pressure to hold true to public purposes--and ultimately, whether or not institutions can effectively mediate those two pressures.