Building a culture of innovation in learning and teaching technologies through an innovators group

Abstract

Innovation was seen as crucial for universities even before the COVID-19 global pandemic, to widen participation within massification strategies, to deliver graduates that meet the needs of economies and to justify increased fees in response to reduced government funding. Innovation will become increasingly important as universities contribute to the post-pandemic recovery of their communities and nations and need to find new avenues for research funding with less reliance on governments. In this paper, we describe our first steps towards developing a culture of innovation in learning and teaching across science, health, and engineering disciplines by bringing together and empowering a group of mostly junior academics. We describe achievements of this group, indicate key success factors, and discuss next steps.