Keywords

Introduction

Research and innovation are two of the most important priorities of Europe’s 2020 strategy, which puts research and innovation as the pillars of economic growth and development [1]. Organizations evolve and remain competitive only through innovation.

To formulate a sufficiently and specific mobilization concept of innovative education, that will be accepted by the scientific and pedagogical staff of Higher Education Institution (HEI), requires the knowledge of modern trends in the area.

Universities are expected to be a source of new ideas and information. But in reality universities often have trouble keeping pace with evolution their own fields of study. There could be many reasons why, however let’s focus on four main points:

  • The slow introduction to new concepts;

  • Communication gaps and shifting priorities;

  • A lack of funding;

  • The verification or validation of new or modified study programs is too slow.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary: Being an advanced means to be ahead of others in progression or idea and leading means providing direction or guidance [2].

The products of universities are study programs; research projects outcomes and publications as a result of their dual research-educational process [3]. These, however, often lag behind the needs and expectations of the future employers of graduates. Offered study programs are presented in curricula. To create such study programs that prepares students in advance to be innovative requires prognostic and creative thinking, modern behavior and flawless performance.

Therefore the HEI should be ahead of the practice and the practice should constantly innovate (of course within the limits of corporate social responsibility).

The purpose of this paper is to present factual and generalized information for advancement and curriculum change according to needs, requirements and expectations associated with current and modern practices in the field.

The research methodology is based on key words text mining and clustering. The results are presented in the form of:

  • Clouds of most frequently used keywords in four areas: (a) provided study programs, (b) student results—the final theses, (c) the results of academics—publishing’s outputs and projects, (d) the professional requirements of practice and trends of innovations;

  • Simplified methodology, which we named ‘Study Program Leading Innovation’ (SPLI).

Social implications of results lie in the increasing of the competitiveness of universities and improving the loyalty of employers of graduates, and other interested parties.

The originality of the solution is in the approach to research and related research methodologies. Critical success factors of the SPLI model are:

  • Creating innovative and creative research team, involving all stakeholders (especially future employers)

  • Reliable assessment of the current state of knowledge and the development trends in the practice (prospective employers of graduates)

  • The creation of the initial idea of the optimum (benchmark) desirable outcome of the current state of the solution, its comparison with the recognized state and factual, resource and chronological planning of the SPLI project.

This paper is intended for HEI executives, academics and professional practitioners who are involved in changing and innovating study programs.

Methodology

The development of a new curriculum and its accreditation often takes several months and with staff and instrumentation preparation, testing, start-up and completion of the first graduates, it could take several years.

HEIs have the opportunity to partly change the curriculum and update content after accreditation, but there is always the question of which way the practice will move and what skills for innovation will graduates need.

Europe’s future economic growth and jobs increasingly will have to come from innovation in products, services and business models. This is why innovation has been placed at the heart of the Europe 2020 strategy for growth and jobs [4].

The EU 2020 strategy sets up a basic research orientation with a detailed creation of curriculum, close monitoring of development trends (technology) and collaboration with the practice is necessary, especially with top experts—innovators in the field.

In the framework of Education, Research and Innovation knowledge triangle universities have a crucial role to play in creating knowledge and translating it into innovative products and services, in cooperation with research centres and businesses [5]. There is a range of mechanisms by which universities can contribute to regional innovation systems [5]. One of the possibilities is that universities and businesses directly cooperate in curricula design and curricula delivery to ensure that graduates has the right skills and transversal competences [5, 6].

Within the research project ESF Technical University of Kosice (TUKE) ITMS 26110230070 ‘Elements package for improvement and innovation in education at Technical University of Kosice’ we have created a general ‘Study Program Leading Innovation’ methodology, which meets the criteria in terms of achieving innovation ahead of the industry:

“– from praxis ahead for praxis –”

The starting point is a collaborative network of teams from Slovak universities and representatives of employers to generate ideas for advance innovation of study programs. The methodology is being tested on the study programs in the field of ‘quality’ on six technical faculties of Slovak universities. The methodology can be suitably generalized and used to advance innovation of courses also in other disciplines.

The research methodology is based on searching keywords and subsequent visualization by tag clouds. The research was conducted in the following steps:

Selection of Electronic Databases for Research on the Subject

  • PortalVS of Slovak HEIs [7]: collects information about curricula; teachers and researchers outputs: publications and projects.

  • Portal Profesia SK [8] and Profesia CZ [9]: collects information on labour supply and demand home and abroad.

Note: We have also investigated Czech portals because of minimum language barrier and the fact that approx. 10 % of Slovak HEI graduates in the field of ‘quality’ profession are looking for work in the Czech Republic.

Search Criteria Based on Portals Offer

  • The title [corresponding to area of research ‘Engineering and Technology’ (SK classification No 17), study branch ‘quality’ (SK classification No 5.2.57)]; keywords and content according to the study program.

  • The title and keywords of final theses (BSc., MSc. (Ing.), and Ph.D. of university study).

  • Authors of publications (name according affiliation to workplace, which guarantees and provide the content of the curriculum), the titles of their publications and keywords (monographs, textbooks, Current Content, Web of Science, Scopus databases and other scientific publications in English language).

  • The name of the profession according to the International Labour Organization Classification of Professions [10] and actual databases of job seekers; most offered professions; higher education institutions; study programs and courses; scientific publication in the area of ‘quality’.

Creating Clouds

According to [11] “A tag cloud (word cloud or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text. Tags are usually single words, and the importance of each tag is shown with font size or colour”. In use, tag clouds can evolve as the associated data source changes over time. Discussions around tag clouds often include a series of tag clouds and consider how they evolve over time. However, since tag clouds do not explicitly represent trends or support comparisons, the cognitive demands placed on the person for perceiving trends in multiple tag clouds are high [12]. Therefore, the results of our research will be presented in future, 1 March, 2014 by Parallel Clouds, which integrate Lines [13] into a tag cloud to convey trends between multiple tag clouds [12].

Comparison Within Clouds

The comparison is realised within clouds in categories: curriculum, theses of students, outputs of academicians and SK and CZ profession portal, Slovak and Swedish expert prediction, and selected Scopus journal.

Visualization and Discussion

Visualization

We used tag clouds for visual representations of social tags, displayed in paragraph-style layout (in this case not in alphabetical order) where the relative size and weight of the font for each tag corresponds to the relative frequency of its usage. The data used as input for our tag clouds are social tags (the unstructured keywords and annotation of information created by authors using short textual labels known as ‘tags’) [14]. Research results in the form of tag clouds are presented in Figs. 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Tag cloud for curriculum from TUKE, Department of Integrated

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Fig. 2
figure 2

Tag cloud for theses of students from TUKE, DIM in the field of ‘quality’ study program

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Fig. 3
figure 3

Tag cloud for educators, researchers and students publications from TUKE, DIM in the field of study ‘quality’ study program

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Fig. 4
figure 4

Tag cloud requirements of employers on graduates’ qualification for positions in the field of ‘quality’

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Note: Requirements of employers on graduates’ qualification for positions in ‘quality’ by International Labour Organization SK ISCO-08 [15] from the databases ‘Profesia SK’ and ‘Profesia CZ’ (see Table 1):

Table 1 Requirements of employers for position in the field of ‘quality’
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Discussion

A comparison of the ten most frequent words as a TUKE DIM outputs, and a summary of three SK HEIs are presented in the Table 2. Comparison of praxis requirements, experts’ predictions for a period of 20 years of three Slovak and three Swedish universities [16] and Quality Innovation Prosperity Scopus journal are presented in the Table 3.

Table 2 Parallel Cloud displays a Gradient Line that Links the Same Word Occurring in Multiple Tag clouds
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Table 3 Presentation of the ten most frequent words in the ‘Profesia SK and CZ’ databases, Slovak and Swedish expert analysis and QIP Journal
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Model and Procedure of Study Program Leading Innovation

SPLI Model

Based on the knowledge gained from the research we have created a graphical model (see Fig. 5) and the methodology for leading innovation of study programs.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Graphic model of paradigm shift of curricula preparation and their content

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Procedure of SPLI

  1. 1.

    Evaluation knowledge of the status and trends of practice development

    1. 1.1

      Creation of initial ideas about study program curriculum based on the practice.

    2. 1.2

      Checking the actual state and development trends of the existing curriculum and its comparison with initial vision.

    3. 1.3

      Creation of the change concept (innovation) for program of study or revolutionary change (i.e., creating a whole new program of study) based on leading innovation in the area and time.

  2. 2.

    Planning and designing changes to existing or a new program.

    1. 2.1

      Creating a plan in accordance with the resources and constraints of HEI stakeholders (internally and externally—the Accreditation Committee and the practice)

    2. 2.2

      Designing a model and starting the SPLI project.

    3. 2.3

      Vindication or if needed a correction of the project of the change to the existing curriculum or a new program before stakeholders (internally and externally—the Accreditation Committee and the practice).

  3. 3.

    Realization of changes in the existing curriculum or creation of new curriculum.

    1. 3.1

      The realization of organizational and personnel changes.

    2. 3.2

      The realization of technical changes and changes in management and implementation of key (research and training) and secondary (administrative) processes.

    3. 3.3

      Design, start-up and normal process of study program, including the creation of documentation and study aids, laboratory training and interaction with the practice (especially) for students theses.

  4. 4.

    Evaluation knowledge of a new state and monitoring of development trends of the improved or new study program.

    1. 4.1

      Determination of actual status against the plan in documentation (records).

    2. 4.2

      Designing and implementing corrections in all monitored areas.

    3. 4.3

      Summarization of knowledge for SPLI knowledge management.

Conclusion

Whoever innovates in advance wins. Universities that prepare graduates for this trend can win in the competition from other universities and their offers of study programs.

Creativity has an essential role to play in education, whether for the purposes of enhancing technical innovation or for creating well-rounded graduates who can truly contribute to society [17].

From a more detailed comparison of the study program, final theses and publications of academics of TUKE DIM with other study programs in Slovakia in the field of ‘quality engineering and management’ follows that the curriculum content is about the same and differs only in details of the subjects depending on the general technical basis of Faculty to which the program is implemented. For example Slovak University of Technology Bratislava—automotive industry and materials; Slovak Agriculture University—agricultural machinery and information’s systems; Technical University of Kosice—metallurgy, foundry, engineering, automotive industry, and mining.

From comparison of the requirements of practice the knowledge and skills of graduates follows, that HEI provide sufficient background for the positions listed in the Table 1, but according to the prediction of experts, it would be useful to include in a curriculum subject/s on creative thinking and innovative behaviour, to extend the selection of subjects relating to the quality of services and develop the students’ ability to think in terms of leadership.

From the Table 3 and thematic topics of scientific conferences in 2013, and planned topics of conferences for the year 2014 we can conclude that the future research can be presented with keywords from the Table 4.

Table 4 Future research keywords in the field of quality
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To achieve leading innovation in study programs it is required:

  • To design and implement the SPLI project and manage information for leading innovation of study programs in the field of study ‘quality engineering and management’.

  • To continuously benchmark products i.e. study programs and curricula as well as research-learning processes versus the best domestic and foreign study programs in the field of ‘quality engineering and management’.

  • Theses should be focused on research projects and innovations in practice.

  • To monitor trends of innovation in the field of application of knowledge and skills of students.