Review of Funding Models for KTP Offices

Many UK Universities and Colleges delivering KTP have set-up a KTP Office to co-ordinate their KTP activity. Reflecting issues raised by the recent Knowledge Transfer Partnerships Strategic Review (2010) undertaken on behalf of the Technology Strategy Board by Regneris Consulting, research was undertaken for the National KTP Forum to explore the funding mechanisms and activities currently being delivered by KTP Offices within UK Universities/FE Colleges. KTP Offices undertake a very wide range of activities that are pivotal to the successful development and delivery of KTP. KTP administration and support is currently being funded mainly by University/Colleges and not from the KTP grants themselves. fEC rates used for KTP are normally University fEC rates for enterprise across the organisation and therefore will not include any extra elements in recognition of the high level of administrative burden necessary for KTP. Universities/Colleges delivering KTP under fEC funding rules are funding KTP administration and proposal development from other internal and external funding sources. Reducing the admin burden of KTP will therefore help Universities/Colleges to deliver KTP more cost effectively, but will not justify a reduction in the KTP grant itself. The average administrative cost of most KTP Offices for supporting each KTP is much lower than anticipated by the Regeneris KTP Strategic Review (particularly in the case of Shorter KTP). Over recent years there has been a continual process of review relating to KTP, much of which has placed an increased administrative burden on Universities/Colleges. The findings of this research would suggest that although these changes have been decided centrally, the Universities/Colleges participating in KTP have been forced to pick up the cost of this additional activity

Review of the Use of the Terms ‘Knowledge Transfer’ and ‘Knowledge Exchange’

Knowledge Transfer is a topic taught on MBA courses across the world and recognised as a professional discipline (e.g. the Institute of Knowledge Transfer), an academic discipline (e.g. the Journal of Knowledge Transfer), as an academic qualification (e.g. the Open University/AURIL Post Graduate Certificate in Knowledge Transfer) and as one of a select few key Government funded business support initiatives (e.g. Knowledge Transfer Partnerships – KTPs and Knowledge Transfer Networks - KTNs). Within the public sector there is currently a debate regarding the use of the term Knowledge Transfer as it is considered by some that Knowledge Exchange more correctly describes the multi-directional sharing of knowledge (both explicit knowledge in the form of rules, theories and models and tacit knowledge in the form of skills, experience and understanding). This research investigates the views of UK Universities in an attempt to gauge the feelings of KT Offices involved in the delivery of knowledge transfer based activities

Sustainability Profitability and Australian Landcare

The landcare movement in Australia has contributed towards a significant change in environmental awareness, and understanding of the immediate and real issues that face landholders. Consequently, many are now questioning the very farming systems that they implement and are keenly aware of the fragility of the environment around them. The long-term future for Australia's agriculture depends on linking environmental management with sound commercial food and fibre production. Sustainable and profitable farm systems are the key to achieving this future. The farming community is faced with increasing calls for the farming community to be more sustainable. Unfortunately, while most farmers accept this, they do not have access to regional indicators for the measurement of sustainability. Therefore, there is an immediate need to develop further some of the work that has been completed nationally into regional models, where farmers reliably adapt the sustainability indicators to on farm applications. To achieve this, national leadership and cooperation between government, industry and research organisations is required. Environmental Management Systems (EMS) are receiving close scrutiny as a means of measuring the impact of a business on the environment. There are many perceived advantages of EMS. These include achieving market access, protection and enhancement of the environment, provision of better management information, and providing a positive image for agriculture. Equally, the farming community is wary of yet more administration and bureaucracy, and would like to be convinced of the positive cost benefits from EMS before embracing EMS as a concept. In comparison to many overseas countries, Australian agriculture is relatively unregulated in an environmental sense. The need to address the challenging question of sustainability, and the potential of EMS as a tool of measurement, provide grounds for strong debate within the country. There is no question that Australia must establish credible systems that are profitable and sustainable. To achieve this, both national leadership and a commitment from the farming community are required.Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management,

Review of the use of partners by KT Offices.

This research was undertaken in partnership with the Institute of Knowledge Transfer UK Universities undertaking Knowledge Transfer (KT) activities are said to be increasingly supported by both internal and external partners. The aim of this work was to identify the extent to which the KT Offices of UK universities are working in partnership with academics and administrators within their organizations and with external service providers A questionnaire was developed using an on-line survey tool (www.surveymonkey.com) to explore this issue. Responses received from the KT Offices at 29 UK universities identified that: • KT Offices were reported to provide a key role in a wide range of activity areas, with strong support from Senior Management. • Major levels of academic involvement were a feature of only a minority of activities. • There was little use of external organisations for undertaking supporting activities

Reconsidering trial and error: A central information practice in everyday food life

This poster reports selected findings from an interpretivist qualitative study of the everyday food lives of people living in urban and rural Canada. This research sought to illuminate how people come to feel informed about food, how people navigate food information on ordinary and extraordinary days, and how people’s encounters with food information are embodied. Through constructivist grounded theory analysis of data resulting from interviews and video tours, this research identified areas of information practice held in common across a diverse group of participants. This poster focuses on one information practice, trial and error, which emerged as complex and generative. The terminology of “trial and error” originally referred to a form of learning that hinges on repetition, with learners trying again and again to solve problems correctly. In this research, participants’ trial and error processes were richer than this. Their processes were also more sophisticated than the portrayal of trial and error in information science scholarship, which tends to emphasize finite processes of overcoming failure, rather than open-ended processes of exploration and experimentation. Trial and error in people’s food lives is an iterative, embodied, information-generating cycle. The result of each effort—each seasoning-to-taste, recipe selection, or dietary adjustment—informs the next effort. By shedding light on trial and error, this poster advances information practices theory in the context of everyday life. It also questions dichotomies that position more widely valorized modes of information engagement, such as critical thinking, as unique in their sophistication

Possibilities for Action: Narrative Understanding

The articles in this section draw on the texts of plenary lectures presented at the seventh Narrative Matters Conference, Narrative Knowing/Récit et Savoir, organized at the Université Paris Diderot, in partnership with the American University of Paris, from June 23-27, 2014. Donald E. Polkinghorne, from whom the conference borrowed its sub-title (see Polkinghorne, 1988), draws on research in cognitive science in order to try to answer the question of how and why “there does not exist, and never has existed, a people without narratives” (Barthes, 1966). In this article, he calls on embodiment theory, a development in cognitive science, as the source for the universality of narrative thought among humans. Having presented narrative (more precisely narrating) as a type of thinking, Polkinghorne begins by offering a description of thinking as noting relationships among items (e.g., similarity, causality, sequentiality) and as making use of cognitive schemas, of which he provides a detailed typology. Polkinghorne then explores the issue of the embodiment of the subject’s experience of narrating. He accounts for the development of the source-path- goal (SPG) schema on the basis of its kinesthetic origin and shows that the SPG schema is incorporated into narrative thinking as its primary structure. Polkinghorne situates himself in a current paradigm which paves the way for the refounding of the problematic of narrative at the interface of the subject’s embodied cognition on the one side and intersubjectively distributed social cognition on the other. (Patron & Schiff, 2015

Foam Rainbow: where humour, disgust and failure mingle in contemporary art

This thesis explores the potent interconnections of humour, disgust and failure to understand their function in contemporary creative practices. Operating in shifty and nebulous terrains, the three experiences are under-researched, and rarely considered in combination. Fused together in certain creative practices, they operate on the threshold of pleasure, revulsion and fiasco. Such an intersection has the potential to produce surprisingly profound aesthetic experiences that fuse cognitive and emotional responses, momentarily disrupting the artifice in art and representation. Humour, disgust and failure are corporeally grounded experiences. Focusing on representational, embodied creative practices, the thesis relies on feminist and aesthetic critiques of representation and gendered subjectivities to position disgust and humour as critical mechanisms. The risks of failure are rethought as disruptive modes through which meaning is created and disturbed to generate new ways of thinking and making. Using my studio-based practice and key works by artists, comedians and filmmakers as examples where all three intersect, the thesis illuminates the peculiarities of gender in the formation of humour, disgust and failure in creative practices. With myself as image source I explore vulgarity, revulsion and representation within an ethical framework that places embodied subjectivity as vital for critiquing and messing-up gendered representation. Combining video projections with sculpture, installation, images and odour, the studio research invites the viewer to experience the work through multiple orifices. This thesis demonstrates the intertwined affectivity of humour, disgust and failure in creative works, how the power of revulsion to arrest merges with the rush to laugh in thresholds of experience that can at any moment collapse, wobble or explode. The interactions of humour, disgust and failure generate complex insights and potent affects which momentarily allow us to “enjoy” a sense of dissolution, to acknowledge our corporeality and aesthetic senses as unified and yet overflowing and intermingled with the world. When this occurs, the ridiculousness of gender, representation, fashion, codes of behaviour and the corporeal nature of ourselves can be revealed

Evaluating the Learning Gain of Undergraduate Students

The UK Government will introduce a Teaching Excellence Framework to measure the quality of teaching across the Higher Education sector. One of the proposed methods for assessing teaching quality is the measurement of student learning gain. Consultation was undertaken so that the thoughts and views of key stakeholders could be integrated into the planned policy changes. Concentrating on the views presented regarding the evaluation of learning gain, a qualitative research study was undertaken using an inductive approach and the philosophical position of interpretivism. A non-probability homogeneous sampling technique was employed to identify consultation responses for inclusion, and the recursive abstraction process applied to review the content of sixty responses so that salient points of interest could be identified with the potential to influence emerging Governmental policy. This poster reflects a synthesising of the important issues raised, from which ten key considerations for evaluating student learning gain are proposed